


But We're Holding The New Morning

by commoncomitatus



Category: The New Legends of Monkey (TV)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Angst and Fluff, Found Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:00:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 104,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27470866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: Post-2x03. All Tripitaka wanted was to help Sandy process her feelings after the village of lost children. Instead, she finds herself faced with an ailing plant, three pint-sized gods, and an insufferable tag-along who won't stop saying "I told you so".
Comments: 39
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is not the post-2x03 fic I expected to write. But it did bring me to over a million words of Actually Finished Fic (TM) for this little show, so that's... something?
> 
> Warnings:  
> Discussion of not-great family units and emotionally harmful treatment of children by such. Themes of loneliness and isolation, self-doubt and self-worth (including implied body- and behaviour-shaming), inability to deal with and process heavy emotions, all experienced and discussed by both adult and child characters.
> 
> All pretty mild and minor by my usual standards -- seriously, this thing is like 80% found family feels and 20% stupidity, there's literally nothing else here -- but figured it's worth being a little extra cautious since kids are involved.

***

Tripitaka was worried.

Two days of slow travel — of travelling slowly by necessity, because Monkey and Kaedo couldn’t seem to make it three steps without stopping to antagonise each other — had brought them just about back to where they’d been a week ago. A little ways ahead, faint and shimmering in the early evening mist, stood the fork in the road, the well-worn path that had taken them in the wrong direction for the right reasons.

It hadn’t changed much, the road or the fork, but they had. A party of five now, where they had once been just four, and another village liberated from demon oppression.

A double victory, and certainly worth the few days’ detour. Tripitaka knew this, just as she knew that she should feel triumphant.

Instead she was worried.

Worried about Kaedo Zef, their newest member. A young boy, barely on the cusp of adolescence, yet he had chosen to join them on their quest as if he were a seasoned adventurer with all the worldliness and experience of three gods combined.

He was a small thing on the surface, Kaedo, but his presence loomed larger than life and the changes he’d brought with him were not so small at all.

She worried, privately and selfishly, about the shift in their comfortable family dynamic; it had taken a long time for the four of them to grow into the well-oiled machine they — sometimes — were, and Kaedo brought with him a fifth element, new and strange and sudden, knocking it all sideways. Who wouldn’t be a little concerned about that?

And yes, she worried because he was so young. Their quest was not a place for children, even ones as talented and worldly as he seemed to be, and none of their little group were nurturers of any kind. Did he have needs? Could they tend them? Would it be too late when they realised they couldn’t?

She worried, only slightly less, about the fangkris he’d gifted her, the poison-tipped dagger resting keen and deadly at her hip, the danger and the threat, the whispering warning that one day, perhaps not too far from now, she might have to use it.

A heavy weight, that dagger, and a different sort of worry. Tripitaka thought, and worried, about all the unwelcome truths Kaedo had shared with her back in the village: that she needed to learn self-reliance, that she needed to hone her own strength and talents, that she couldn’t always depend on her gods to leap in and save her from every new danger.

She was lucky in the village. Next time, perhaps she wouldn’t be.

But that was a problem all its own too: she wore the robes of a monk. Raised by a monk, surrounded by monks, even if she hadn’t taken the vows, they were as close to her heart as the clothes and the name she’d made her own. She didn’t know if she had it in her to use that beautiful, deadly weapon against anyone.

Even if she had no gods to protect her. Even if she had no choice.

She tried not to think about it, but avoidance had never stopped her from worrying before and it certainly didn’t stop her now.

All it did was push that particular worry aside, leaving a free, open space for others to slip in, stealthy and sneaky, to take its place.

Other worries, like...

“Are we stopping?”

Like Sandy, speaking up now for the first time in a day and a half.

It was an simple, innocuous question, at least on the surface. Evening was falling fast; there was light enough for a couple more leagues if they pushed themselves, but the fork in the road offered a good camping spot, a place to rest and rejuvenate before setting out anew in the morning. A good question, a smart question, and one worth considering... if not for its not-so-innocuous source.

Sandy, who had not spoken in almost two days, who spoke now like a ghost surfacing from its own grave. There was a heavier weight hidden beneath the simple question, reflected in the dark smudges under her eyes, the lines of fatigue poorly hidden, the hitch in her voice that she probably thought she was holding under her tongue.

The village, two days behind them now, was still with her.

Tripitaka, studying her closely as she pretended to ponder the question, was very, very worried.

“I don’t know,” she said guardedly. “What do you think?”

“You’re asking her?” This from Pigsy, bringing up the rear with their supplies strapped to his back, huffing and puffing and generally making sure his displeasure was well documented. “Might as well ask the blasted plant for all the sense you’ll get.”

Sandy, cradling the plant in question to her chest, took that not as the insult it surely was but as a suggestion. She tilted her head to the side, studied the thing for nearly a minute, then announced: “She says she’s thirsty.”

Pigsy massaged his temples. “Of course she does.”

Sandy whispered a barely-audible placation at the plant, then said to Pigsy, in an authoritative, chiding sort of voice, “You ought to take her needs more seriously. She is fated to save your life, you know.”

“How could I forget?” Still, the reminder seemed to jolt him back to himself a little; he shuffled forward, one hand held out, wheedling hopefully, “Don’t suppose it’s my turn to look after the thing yet?”

“No.”

Her flinch, minute and subtle, probably went unnoticed by all except Tripitaka. She might have questioned her, and no doubt regretted it, but thankfully she didn’t get the chance.

Monkey, characteristically bored with any moment that wasn’t directly about him, cleared his throat and steered the conversation neatly back to its original point:

“So what’s the verdict, monk? Stop here for the night or keep going until full dark?” He squinted into the gathering mist, assessing their surroundings in a rare show of leadership. “Could make it another league or two, probably. You know, if the little shrimp can keep up...”

This last was aimed at Kaedo, who retaliated with staggering immaturity by sticking out his tongue.

Tripitaka sighed, turning away in disgust as they devolved into the squabbling and sharp elbows that had coloured all of their interactions thus far. As tempting as it was to chasten them both, she knew it would prove pointless; when two oversized egos collided, experience had taught her it was best to simply stay out of the way. 

They’d all just have to get used to it, she mused wearily, if Kaedo was planning on sticking around.

Focusing instead on the more pressing matter, she squinted through the gloom and made a decision.

“Might as well keep going,” she said, softening slightly as she turned her attention back to Sandy; she seemed wholly unbothered, but the lines under her eyes were dark and warned of bone-deep exhaustion. “If you... I mean, if your _plant_ isn’t too tired?”

The feint at tact might have worked on one of the others, but Sandy was well known for taking everything literally. She stared quizzically at Tripitaka for a beat, then pointed out, rather unnecessarily, “She’s a plant.”

“I can see that, Sandy.”

Apparently that was not enough to mollify her, because she pressed, with absolute seriousness, “Plants don’t get tired.”

“I...” She sighed. “Right. Of course. How silly of me to ask.”

“You see?” Pigsy huffed. “No sense in asking her anything.”

His point being well and truly made, he adjusted the straps of the pack on his back and stomped noisily off to catch up with Monkey and Kaedo.

Tripitaka watched him go, but didn’t immediately follow.

Sandy, loitering loyally at her side, was bent over her little potted charge and seemed not to realise that the others had already started to move again. She was rocking the plant against her body, murmuring musically to it like a mother to a sick child, and Tripitaka’s heart kicked in harmony behind her ribs, unable to decide whether it should feel touched by the display or simply saddened.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Sandy didn’t answer. Tripitaka hadn’t really expected her to, but the worry grew stronger inside her even so, amplified by Sandy’s distance and quiet, by her single-minded focus on the plant, by the tension in her body that seemed to have no discernible source.

She was hidden, sort of, but not really hiding in any of the ways she usually would; while it was not unusual for her to disappear inside herself or try to make herself unseen, this seemed more about her insides than the world beyond that so often intimidated her. A sort of dissonance, perhaps, between the nerves and muscles of the body and whatever thoughts had taken root inside her head.

Whether she’d heard the question or not, Tripitaka couldn’t tell, but there was no clarity in Sandy’s eyes when she finally lifted her head; she seemed almost surprised to find she wasn’t alone.

“Tripitaka,” she murmured, as though testing the name on her tongue, searching for familiarity. Then, holding out the plant like it was the most precious thing in all the world, she added, “She’s not well.”

Tripitaka blinked, only slightly thrown by the abrupt change of subject; confusing, perhaps, but it was so typically Sandy she wasn’t especially surprised. Still, the shift was specific enough that it made her raise a curious, concerned brow.

“The plant’s not well?” she pressed, slowly and very carefully. “Or you’re not well?”

A silly question, perhaps, had she been dealing with one of the others, but this would hardly be the first time Sandy had confused her own feelings with those of an inanimate object, living or otherwise. Indeed, since she’d acquired the mysterious plant from Mycelia, supposedly fated to save Pigsy’s life at some point in the future, that particular disconnect seemed to happen more frequently than ever.

Emotional overflow, Tripitaka supposed, from a mind so often unable to fathom its own inner workings. Another worry to add to the list, and another thing to try too hard not to think about.

Sandy, being typically oblivious to Tripitaka’s thoughts, pondered the question for a long moment then made a point of not answering. “Don’t tell Pigsy,” she begged instead, then held out the plant again for Tripitaka’s perusal. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

Humouring her with some reluctance, Tripitaka leaned in closer to examine the thing.

“It looks all right to me,” she shrugged after a brief, puzzled beat.

True enough so far as she could tell, though she knew little enough about plant life that she doubted she would recognise if it wasn’t.

Sandy, no doubt sensing that, insisted, “No, she’s definitely unwell.”

Tripitaka sighed. “Are you sure you’re not just... I don’t know, projecting your feelings or something?” She anticipated the flinch that followed, stepping back a little to give Sandy the space she surely needed, but pressed on even so, undeterred. “It wouldn’t exactly be the first time, would it? And after what happened in that village back there...”

“No.”

Tripitaka watched her closely: the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the widening of her eyes, the fragile leaves of the plant twitching as her hands began to shake. She wondered if Sandy was aware of any of these things, if she knew how completely her body was giving her away.

“Sandy,” she said, as gently as she could, hoping that the sound of her name would help to guide her back to the present. “Do you want to talk about what happened back there?”

“You already know what happened.” Brow furrowed, she seemed genuinely confused, but the heaving of her chest didn’t slow and her eyes didn’t any of lose their trapped-animal wildness. “There was a demon, stealing children. Now the demon is dead and the children are free and safe.”

Tripitaka swallowed another sigh. “You still haven’t told us how you found them,” she pointed out. “Or how you defeated the demon in the first place.”

“It’s not a particularly exciting story.” The tremors in her hands grew worse, so much so that she had to adjust and tighten her grip on the plant or risk dropping it. “I wouldn’t want to bore you by retelling it.”

“Sandy.” She willed her voice to stay low, her eyes to stay soft; one wrong move when Sandy was like this, and she’d bolt like a rabbit. “You’ve barely spoken at all in days.”

The fingers of Sandy’s other hand tightened on the haft of her scythe, hanging loosely at her side and angled away from her body and the plant. Her throat convulsed in a visible, audible gulp, but she continued to stare at Tripitaka as though she was trying to decipher some ancient, untranslatable language.

It reminded Tripitaka of Monkey, the way he would glare and scowl at the two sacred scrolls they’d gathered, trying to learn their illegible secrets by sheer frustrated force of will.

“I’ve had little to say,” Sandy said after a beat. “Why should I speak if I don’t have anything to say?” She smiled, a hazy, disjointed sort of smile that didn’t really fit her face; it was one she wore often, most commonly when grappling with a concept beyond her grasp. “Isn’t that why we have Monkey?”

Tripitaka chuckled. “He does enjoy the sound of his own voice,” she agreed, with a fondness she would certainly never admit to his face. “And I know you don’t. But still...”

“Still you want to talk about it.” Another spasm in her throat, slightly less violent but just as painful-sounding. “If you require the details for your chronicle, Tripitaka, I could try to...”

“No, no.” Too hasty: Sandy’s eyes widened, and she took a nervous step back. “Nothing like that, Sandy, really.”

“Then what?” She sounded almost as exhausted as she looked. “It’s been a long day, Tripitaka. If you want me to do something for you, please speak clearly.”

“I don’t want... _no_.” She tried to catch her eye, but Sandy was being typically evasive and refused to lift her gaze from the plant. “I’m just worried about you, that’s all. I know how unpleasant it was for you, being in that village, and I thought you might want to talk about your feelings.”

“My...” Her features twisted in a grimace. “My feelings?”

She said the last word slowly with a drunken sort of unsteadiness, like she didn’t really know what it meant. It did not lessen Tripitaka’s worry even the tiniest bit.

“Yes,” she said, just as slow. “You were pretty badly affected.”

Sandy made a small sound, like a wounded warrior walking on a broken bone. “Of course I was,” she rasped, barely above a whisper. “So much fear and fury from those villagers. So many voices all raised at me, so many pairs of eyes and boots and hands, all raised in anger. So much grief and hate, so much—” Her eyes fluttered shut, jaw working in rhythm with her shallow, straining breaths. “You know this wasn’t the first time, Tripitaka. I’ve been in that village, or others like it, more times than you can imagine. I’ve been those children, and I’ve been that demon.”

The shudder in her voice was a brutal, devastating thing. Tripitaka reached out, unable to stop herself, to catch Sandy’s wrist, bracing her thumb against the rhythm of her pulse.

 _You’re okay,_ she thought but could not say. _You’re here, you’re safe, you’re—_

“I know,” she said instead, simpler. “That’s why I thought it might help to...”

“To bring it all up again?” The shudders became cracks, and then the threat of shattering entirely. “To dredge the past like the bottom of the sea when I’ve finally crawled back up onto dry land? How is that supposed to help? How is that supposed to...” She shook her head, yanking her wrist free with unexpected violence and retreating to a few paces’ distance. “I don’t _understand_.”

The weight of that confession was a blow, Tripitaka could tell, and one rather more painful than the threat of unpleasant memories: really and truly, with every part of herself, she was trying and failing to make sense of this.

It was understandable, she supposed, though that didn’t make it less heartbreaking. Sandy spoke about herself so rarely, and always with the numb detachment of one telling a story. Oblivious to the cracks and catches in her voice, the shudders of her body, the tears in her eyes, she seemed not to realise that those responses came from the words, the experience relived and poured out through her mouth: truly, she did not understand any of it.

It made Tripitaka ache for her, and it made her feel so, so helpless.

“It’s not healthy,” she said, trying to explain as best she could with her own limited words. “Keeping your feelings inside. They don’t go away, Sandy, they just fester in there, getting more and more painful until...”

“Untrue.” She ducked her head again, covering her face and turning all her attention back to the plant. “The only thing inside me is water. Bad water, yes, but water just the same. And water doesn’t fester. At the worst it grows stagnant. Unpleasant to taste, perhaps, but it slakes your thirst just as well and does no harm.”

Tripitaka studied her face. One of the few benefits of her short stature: when they stood side by side like this, it was easier to pierce Sandy’s favourite hiding techniques, to slide in between the shadows thrown by her hair and mark the darker ones staining the skin underneath.

“You haven’t slept since we left that place,” she guessed, “have you?”

It was no surprise, only a disappointment, that Sandy did not answer.

“That place is behind us,” she said instead. “Two days now, it’s behind us. Why can’t we just leave it there?”

 _Because I’m worried about you_ , Tripitaka thought. _Because you won’t talk and you’re not sleeping, because you’re hiding from me and hiding from yourself and you don’t understand why that’s a bad thing. How am I supposed to leave that place behind us when it’s still inside you?_

“Sandy,” she whispered.

It was no surprise, either, that Sandy bristled and grew tense. “My name is not a weapon, Tripitaka.”

But it was, in a way.

At the very least, it became one when Tripitaka said it. Sandy, who would follow her to the ends of the world and back again simply because she was the one who asked it. On her tongue the name became a blade; turned one way or another it could become an order, a command, and Sandy would obey her without a moment’s thought.

Tripitaka didn’t want that. She’d never wanted it, even when she was pretending to be someone else, even when she knew that devotion was keeping her secret safe: Sandy, who never questioned anything if it came from her, who would do anything she asked, even if it caused her pain.

Sometimes, in her darker and more troubled moments, she wondered if that power was more destructive in its own way than the crown sutra she used on Monkey. More terrible by far, to hold someone’s faith in her hands, unbidden and unasked, knowing that one foolish choice could shatter it.

Remembering, just as unbidden, just as unwanted, a moment when it very nearly did.

Another village, not so unlike the one behind them. Another moment of confession, an echo of another lost child, Sandy laying herself open with empty, unseeing eyes and grief strangling her voice, whispering terrible stories, toneless and hollow and broken as she spilled out her deepest childhood pain.

Tripitaka had wanted to reach for her then, too. But she had been stubborn and angry, locked up in her own past, her own childhood, and she had not wanted to hear or see the heartbreak Sandy was laying at her feet.

She had turned her away, then, and she had suffered dreadfully for it. Taken captive by Davari and forced to translate the Scroll of Immortality, the whole world thrown into further peril because she had been too stubborn and angry to listen when Sandy spoke.

It was not a mistake she planned on making again now.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Sandy nodded, swallowing in that nervous, compulsive way she did sometimes when she was particularly uncomfortable or uneasy.

“We don’t need to talk about it.” She lifted her head at last, and her eyes were hollow and lightless, their blue-grey waters frozen to ice. “And I don’t want to.”

Tripitaka thought of that other village, the North Water, the place where she herself was born. She thought of the way Sandy’s eyes grew vacant there as well, the way her voice grew empty too, the way her stride grew stiffer as she walked away. 

She wondered if she’d ever worked through that, the old wounds reopened there, the loss of her home and her family, of the life she’d assumed would be hers forever. She wondered if the other loss — _her_ , and their place together on the quest — had overridden it, if she’d been so much lost in the present she’d let the creeping frost of the past dig in its claws unchecked.

She wanted to ask. She wanted to talk about that too, to make Sandy talk about all of it, to push her through the numbness, chip away at the ice until it grew warmer again, until she could recognise her friend somewhere in that shadow-lined face.

She wanted to _help_.

She had so many reasons to worry, and so many of them were so far out of her reach. She wanted one that she could do something about, one little thing that she could control. She wanted—

She sighed.

“Okay,” she said, filling her vision with Sandy’s eyes, with the present, with now, with a village that held personal meaning to only one of them, and not to the other. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay.”

“Is it really?”

The mistrust stung, but Tripitaka didn’t let it show. “Yeah,” she said, lowering her voice until it was nearly as deep as Sandy’s. “We don’t have to talk about anything that makes you uncomfortable. If you’d rather just...”

“Yes, that, please.”

And there: a slight thawing, ice back to water, shadow dissipating to reveal a faint glimmer of light. She blinked, once and then again, and when she finally let Tripitaka look into her eyes they were pale and damp with mist.

She didn’t cry. Tripitaka sometimes wondered if she could.

Certainly, she had never seen it. She’d only ever heard the threat of tears in her voice, a river lodged in her throat with its waters dammed and held back. Was she scared, she wondered, of what would happen if that dam broke? Or had she simply forgotten how, after all those years alone in the cold and the dark with no-one to see or hear if she did?

Maybe she didn’t need to talk about it after all, Tripitaka thought sadly. Sandy was a water god, attuned to all things flowing. Maybe all she really needed was to cry it out.

She didn’t get a chance to give voice to the thought. Sandy’s attention was gone, turned back to her precious plant, features twisting with a sentiment Tripitaka knew far too well.

“I’m worried,” she said.

Tripitaka smiled, as heavy as the lines on Sandy’s face.

“Yeah,” she said, hushed and conspiratorial. “Me too.”

*

Another two hours, just short of two full leagues, and they stopped to make camp for the night.

The new path was a generous one to travellers, with a river flowing freely on one side and a lush-looking forest on the other. The trees would make good shelter, its wood clean, dry, and good for burning, while the river offered fresh water and plentiful fish for eating. For all her worry, at least in this Tripitaka felt that she could relax a little.

For a time, anyway.

Monkey and Kaedo handled the fishing, squabbling and scrapping the whole time as was their habit. Sandy, giving the water an uncharacteristically wide berth, disappeared into the forest alone, gathering wood for the campfire that Pigsy had started to build in her absence.

Tripitaka, being rather more weary than she’d care to admit, laid out her bedroll and lazed, content for once to let the others do the manual labour on her behalf. The air was cool, but she felt warm, balmed and soothed by the comfortable familiarity.

Accustomed as they were by now to these nightly routines, the four of them went about their tasks without the need for communication, moving as a single unit and acting as if in tune with each other’s thoughts. The addition of Kaedo, new though he was, had not disrupted this efficiency in the least; in truth, the extra pair of hands, and his willingness to use them well, had brought nothing but benefit to them all.

For all his youth, the boy was clearly well accustomed to life on the road. Tripitaka didn’t really know what to make of that, or of him, but the one thing she was sure of was that it didn’t comfort her as much as she’d thought it would.

He was cheeky and mischievous, more than a little insufferable at times, but he was diligent too, and he had a surprising talent for getting things done; indeed, as much as he and Monkey enjoyed antagonising each other, the two of them made a surprisingly good team. They returned from the river with impressive swiftness, still cheerfully driving each other to distraction but weighed down with enough fish to feed the five of them for a good two days at least.

Pigsy cooked, Monkey smirked and congratulated himself loudly enough to disturb the local wildlife, and Kaedo settled down in front of the fire to warm his hands, looking much older than his years suggested.

Tripitaka watched him, and tried to convince herself to stop worrying.

She watched Sandy, too, crouched on the other side of the fire. She huddled there alone, distanced as she often was from the rest of them, holding the plant in both hands and seemingly oblivious to everyone and everything beyond her immediate radius.

Perhaps she was trying to stop worrying, too, about the thing and its illusory illness.

If so, it was readily apparent that she was having no better luck than Tripitaka was.

She refused to eat any of Monkey and Kaedo’s hard-caught fish — seafood was always a hard thing for her to stomach, even without the added weight of memory bringing those old childhood voices back to the fore — but she was happy enough to chew on the fruits and root vegetables that Pigsy stirred up as a side dish. It was probably as much as Tripitaka could hope for, that she was willing to eat anything at all; there were still days when even that was too much to expect.

Again, Tripitaka told her wandering, worried mind to calm down.

Again, without success.

Later, sated and warm and still worrying, when the evening meal had settled comfortably in her belly and the sun was following suit on the horizon, she let Kaedo teach her a few moves with the fangkris.

He was very talented, much to Monkey’s annoyance, and had clearly been using the thing long enough to hone his skills well; that should have been all the proof she needed, really, that he could comfortably hold his own out here in the middle of nowhere, with or without gods to protect him.

Tripitaka, as much of a scholar at heart as the monk who had raised her, studied his lessons as if they were ancient texts.

Unfortunately, her body was not so quick as her mind when it came to absorbing new information and new skills; though she wasn’t dreadful with the dagger by any means, she certainly lacked the young boy’s prowess and panache, and where his moves carved through the air like it was made of spun silk, hers were chaotic, choppy, and clumsy.

Scholars, it seemed, did not make for strong warriors. And all the more so when they’d been raised to keep their heads down, buried in books and scrolls and far away from blades and hilts.

Kaedo was a ruthless, unforgiving instructor, which probably did not help. Tripitaka had trained a little with her gods over the course of the quest thus far, and they all showed patience when working with their resident fragile human; even Monkey, not exactly known for that particular virtue even on his good days, came at her slowly and gave clear, careful instructions. Even Pigsy, military perfectionist that he was, did not criticise her too harshly when she fell, helping her up with a grin and a cheery _“Better luck next time, eh?”_

She received none of that leniency from Kaedo. Perhaps because he was human too, perhaps because he was so young and she so much older than him; perhaps he assumed that these things should come as naturally to her as they clearly did to him. No matter the reason, he was aggressive and impatient with her, occasionally temperamental, and utterly determined to drag the best out of her, even if he had to do it by force.

“You’re still holding back,” he snapped after a particularly humiliating defeat. “You have to use it like you mean it.”

“I _am_.” Face heating, acutely aware of the way all three of her gods were watching them, she bit down on her tongue to keep from losing her patience and her temper. “I just don’t want to bury this thing in your head and poison you.”

He snorted, like the idea was nothing short of absurd, like the fangkris wasn’t genuinely lethal in her clumsy, untrained hands. “How do you expect to hold your own against demons and gods when you won’t even go all-out against me?”

Watching from the sidelines, Monkey rolled his eyes. “I’ll go all-out against you, pipsqueak.” Arms folded across his chest, ignoring Kaedo’s counter-sneer, he added: “And anyway, she doesn’t need to hold her own against demons or whatever. She’s got _me_.”

Pigsy coughed. “Reckon you mean ‘us’, there, mate.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He waved a hand, characteristically dismissive. “Me _and_ us. Same thing.”

“Okay, but it’s not really the same thing at all, is it?”

Kaedo, thoroughly unimpressed, levelled them both with a glare. “Right, yeah. Because it was _so_ helpful, having you two around back in that village.” The glare faded, but his eyes remained as hard and cold as onyx. “Oh wait, no it wasn’t.”

Despite herself, Tripitaka shivered. She had mostly recovered from the helplessness and fear that had taken hold in that awful cage, the horror that came with staring down a wild, angry mob, trying to defend herself against enemies whose only crimes were to try and protect themselves. Mostly recovered, anyway, but the experience had left her shaken down to the core, and it seemed that feeling was not going to vanish any time soon.

She’d been convinced that her gods would appear, rushing in to save the day at the last moment. And they had, this time, but Kaedo was right: could she afford to blithely assume the same would happen next time?

She turned the fangkris over in her hands, gauging its weight and its deftness, clearing her mind and steeling her body, readying herself to try again.

Of course, her companions being who they were, she didn’t get the chance to start. Monkey, never the type to let an accusation slide past unchallenged — and with good cause, she supposed, given his history — was on his feet, towering over Kaedo with fire blazing in his eyes.

“ _We_ ,” he said in a low, dangerous growl, “were busy saving _actual_ children from _actual_ demons. While _you_ were messing around getting _our_ monk into trouble—”

Kaedo snickered. “Yeah, no. She managed that part all by herself.”

Monkey growled again, this time a real threat. “While _you_ were getting _our_ monk into trouble,” he repeated, pointedly, “ _we_ were doing the real hero’s work.”

Pigsy cleared his throat again, rather louder. In part to antagonise Monkey, as he so loved doing, but in part too, Tripitaka suspected, to diffuse the tension before it could ignite and become explosive.

“If you want to get technical,” he pointed out, “ _we_ were busy almost getting blown to bits while saving one little runaway from his own bad decisions.”

Monkey turned that furnace-hot glare on him. “Not helping, Pigsy!”

Maybe not, but Tripitaka had a feeling that was exactly the point: Pigsy had a particular talent for redirection, and as long as Monkey was glaring at him, a fellow god who could hold his own against even the Monkey King’s famed wrath, he wasn’t threatening the boy.

Still, Tripitaka couldn’t help wishing they’d all just drop the subject entirely. She wanted to go back to her training, and she could tell that Kaedo felt the same way. She definitely didn’t want any more attention brought to the village and its various tribulations than was absolutely necessary, but one thing she’d learned beyond all doubt in her time on the quest was that nothing short of rampaging demons could stop Monkey and Pigsy once they started arguing.

“I’m just saying,” Pigsy was ‘just’ saying. “If you want to talk about the _real_ hero of the day...”

“No.” This from Sandy, hugging her knees and staring emptily at the fire. “Please don’t do that.”

“Why not?” His smile, cheerfully approving, might have worked in any other situation, but Tripitaka knew it would hold no weight in this one. “I mean, you did find and save all those kids single-handed. And defeated the demon by yourself, to boot. That’s nothing to sneeze at.”

“Not sneezing.” Sandy held the plant up to the firelight, studying it so that she wouldn’t have to look around and see four pairs of eyes all fixed on her. “Just asking you to stop talking about it.”

She closed her eyes, then, conjuring water at her fingertips to sprinkle the potted soil. Unnecessary, perhaps, but Tripitaka suspected the gesture was meant to make a point: she wanted to be left alone with her plant and her water.

Pigsy, getting the message and realising his approval was unwanted, let out a grunt and occupied himself elsewhere.

Kaedo, being rather more sensitive to Sandy’s moods than Tripitaka would have expected from one so young and antagonistic, followed his lead.

“Look,” he said to Tripitaka, taking her by the wrist and gently twisting. “If you angle the blade this way instead...”

And so the lesson continued.

For approximately a minute.

Having never been one to read the temperature of the room — or, indeed, anything that wasn’t directly about him — Monkey was rather less willing than the others to let the subject drop. In part, no doubt, because Pigsy’s observation had effectively redirected the limelight away from him and he was eager for a chance to bring it back, still when he spoke again it was with seemingly genuine curiosity.

“Seriously, though,” he said, glowering at Pigsy and Sandy both. “It’s kind of weird, if you ask me.”

“No-one did,” Pigsy pointed out.

Monkey ignored him. “A demon stealing human children but not killing them? What’s that about?”

“Not all demons kill their prey,” Sandy mumbled, keeping her attention fixed on the plant and far from her companions. “She had her own reasons for keeping them alive. Isn’t it enough to be grateful that she did?”

Monkey shrugged. “Could be useful information,” he pointed out, either blithely oblivious or simply choosing to ignore her visible discomfort. “If we know why those freaks do the freakish stuff they do, we can better outsmart them.”

It was an unexpectedly shrewd observation, coming from one who generally preferred the punch-first-think-never approach to hunting demons. Despite herself, Tripitaka hummed her approval.

Sandy, hunching her shoulders as if in self-defence, said, “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh yeah?” Never one to back away from a perceived challenge, real or imaginary, Monkey sauntered over to her side, snatched the plant out of her hands, and plonked himself down next to her. “Try me, oh all-knowing demon psychologist.”

Sighing her resignation, Tripitaka slipped the fangkris back onto her belt. Apparently, training time was well and truly over.

“Monkey,” she warned, sidling closer in case she needed to step in and intervene. Monkey would never do willing harm to one of his friends, but his obliviousness could be a problem at times. “Stop bothering her. She doesn’t want to talk about it.”

Kaedo, rolling his eyes, stalked over to the opposite side of the fire and snatched up one of the leftover fish. “Gods,” he snorted, only slightly under his breath. “Always so dramatic.”

Rather proving his point, Monkey elbowed Sandy in the ribs and wheedled, “Come on, then. If you’re such an expert in what makes demons tick, why not enlighten the rest of us?”

Tripitaka’s temper flared. It took more restraint than she’d care to admit to keep from using the crown sutra.

“That’s enough, Monkey.” More than a warning this time, it had the acid taste of a threat. “Leave her alone.”

“It’s all right, Tripitaka.” This from Sandy, sounding resigned and exhausted. No doubt she knew just as well as the rest of them that nothing short of actual violence would make Monkey back down from something he’d decided was a point of pride. She wrestled the plant back from him, holding it up between them like a barrier, and conceded, “He does have a point: it may help to know our enemies’ minds.”

“That enemy is dead,” Tripitaka reminded her, averting her gaze so she wouldn’t have to see her flinch.

“That doesn’t mean we can’t learn from her.” She sighed, heavy and ragged enough to disturb the grass. “She was a lot like me. A creature of the depths and the dark. At home in the sea. Not here.”

Pigsy grimaced, clearly somewhat disgusted. “Right, right. ‘Squid demon’, yeah?”

Sandy nodded, not looking at him. “They’re not creatures who thrive on dry land.” 

The unspoken addition — _and neither am I_ — seemed to go unheard by all except Tripitaka. “Sandy.”

“Yes.” She wet her lips, then watered the plant again. “I think she missed it. The sea, the salt. The...”

She stopped, slamming her eyes shut as though resisting some terrible hidden memory. The plant quivered slightly in her hands, its pale green leaves looking almost ghostly under the fading light.

Tripitaka kept her eyes on the plant, too frightened to look at Sandy’s face and see the dark lines beneath her eyes and around her mouth; she watched the trembling leaves, not the trembling hands, and wondered if Sandy felt in herself the things she claimed to have seen in Lady Tsumori, if she too felt like she was drowning here, on the dry land the rest of them took so much for granted.

“Yeah, yeah.” Monkey, with his usual destructive tactlessness, cared not at all for unvoiced nuances or subtleties in detail; he lanced through Sandy’s softness like the speeding projectile he so often was, and rushed on: “Demon sad, demon lonely, demon far from home. Blah, blah, blah. What’s that got to do with the stolen brats?”

Sandy said nothing for a long while. Head bowed, in contemplation or perhaps in pain, she watered the plant in sporadic, compulsive bursts, like she couldn’t quite control the outward flow of moisture from her shaking hands.

Tripitaka watched the sputtering sprinkles, the only kind of water Sandy ever let out of her: conjured and artificial. Her eyes, only partially hidden, were pale and damp like they had been earlier, but what moisture Tripitaka could see in their depths was held back, caged by her long lashes as she blinked rapidly, as she swallowed thickly, as she poured her magical, self-created water onto her beloved plant and did not let herself cry.

And there, Tripitaka realised, was the answer to Monkey’s question.

What else would a lonely sea-dwelling creature want from children?

She looked away, hiding her own face so that Sandy wouldn’t know how much of herself was on display right now, painted in dry saltless tracks across her face.

For her sake, to spare her from having to say the words, Tripitaka said them for her: “She wanted their tears.”

Sandy, damp-eyed with dry cheeks, still spraying water onto a plant that surely didn’t need so much, nodded.

“Water and salt,” she explained quietly. “The taste of the sea, of her home. Freely given from children. And from frightened ones most of all. Especially...” Her head snapped up, eyes growing clearer, like she was realising now for the first time that she wasn’t alone, that she wasn’t speaking to herself, that her friends were there, and listening to every word she said. “Children cry so easily,” she finished, blinking rapidly. “Because they don’t...”

She trailed off, shaking her head.

No matter: Tripitaka understood.

 _Because they haven’t yet learned to hide their pain_.

She knew that Sandy would never say it. She couldn’t, not without drawing attention to her own pain, her own tears, the ones she could not or would not shed, the ones caught in her throat, lodged in her chest, strangled and suffocated and smothered, the ones that she’d cried out all those years ago and then never cried again.

Tripitaka wanted to go to her, but she knew there was nothing she could do or say, no offering she could give to make this easier. Sandy had learned that lesson too long ago, the terrible price of letting out her pain in places where others could see and touch and take. If Tripitaka approached her now, if she invited her to let it out, she would shut down, as she did earlier, and say again that she didn’t want to talk about it.

And all the while those unshed tears built up like a flood inside her.

Tripitaka ached again. And again, heavier than before, she worried.

Monkey, clearly not aching at all, snorted and said, “So the demon was, what, harvesting their wailing?”

Sandy swallowed a handful of times, thick and nervous. “I can’t say for sure,” she admitted, then glanced shyly at Tripitaka. “She’s dead, as you said; we can’t very well ask her. But that’s what I think, yes. Creatures like her...”

 _Creatures like me,_ she really meant, and Tripitaka found herself blinking back a flurry of tears of her own.

“Okay,” she said, with gentle authority. “That’s enough now, okay?”

Monkey made a disgruntled noise. “Yeah. Sorry I even asked. Demons are so weird.”

Though she would not say so, Tripitaka wasn’t sure she agreed.

Watching Sandy as she cradled her plant and filled it up with all the water she would not cry, surrounded by friends but still hiding, still scared, still believing herself more like a demon than the gods who had become her family, Tripitaka privately thought that it wasn’t very weird after all.

To want a taste of home, a memory of somewhere safe.

Even in a demon she thought she could understand that.

In a god...

She shook her head, breathed to ease the ache in her chest, and felt the tidal wave of worry rise up in her again.

*


	2. Chapter 2

*

The night that followed was no less worrisome.

Tripitaka had only been asleep for a couple of hours when she was thrown back into consciousness, jolted awake by a panic-stricken Sandy shaking her shoulder like she was trying to shake the life out of her.

Irritable and only half-awake, Tripitaka shoved her away. “Go and bother Monkey.”

“I can’t.” Her voice, pitchy and discordant even on her good days, was audible on only about a third of what she was saying; it did not endear Tripitaka to the idea of getting up and trying to wring a coherent sentence out of her. “Tripitaka, please. You have to help me, I don’t know what’s wrong, I don’t know what to do, she’s _dying_ —”

That last word, fraught with terror, cut through the grogginess.

Tripitaka bolted upright, dread overriding the sleep-touched crankiness; she was about half a breath away from taking Sandy by the collar and shaking her until she offered more information when she remembered that they were the only two in their camp who went by ‘she’, and were both healthy and accounted for.

The sick horror dissolved, strangled by dawning reality, and the crankiness returned in full force.

“Your plant,” she realised aloud, in a low, dangerous hiss. “You’re talking about your _plant_.”

Sandy, no less panicked, nodded frantically a few dozen times. “She’s dying!” she moaned again.

Tripitaka swallowed a very un-monk-like curse.

“Sandy,” she growled, allowing the god to see exactly how little patience she had right now. “The plant is fine. You’re fine. Everything’s fine. Now go back to sleep, or so help me—”

“Tripitaka, _please_.”

And there: the tremor in her voice, the quivering of her lower lip, the unspilled water making her eyes gleam even paler than usual, ethereal and shimmering under the moonlight. Tripitaka hated how disarming that was, hated that it chased away the righteous anger and left her paralysed.

She sighed, biting down on another curse and hauled herself upright. “Sandy...”

No response from the god, only from the plant, thrust urgently under her nose.

Its condition spoke for itself, much to Tripitaka’s aggravation.

And, yes, worry. Much worry, because Sandy was not wrong.

The plant’s condition was undeniable, its tiny leaves drooping and discoloured, visible even in the dark. Tripitaka was no botanical expert, but she had tended the gardens at the Scholar’s monastery often enough to know the difference between a healthy plant and a sick one; whether or not she believed Sandy and Pigsy’s claims that this particular plant would one day save his life, it was fairly obvious that right now the poor thing was barely holding on to its own.

Dying, just as Sandy said, or near enough to it.

As much as Tripitaka did not appreciate being woken in the dead of night to fuss over a plant, the way Sandy kept glancing over her shoulder at Pigsy’s bedroll spoke a great deal about her concerns.

Tripitaka sighed, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, and tried to take this as seriously as Sandy was. “Are we sure Mycelia knew what she was talking about?” she asked, perhaps a bit too optimistically.

“Are you willing to bet Pigsy’s life on her being a liar?” Sandy demanded. A decent point, though Tripitaka could have done without the way she shook the thing in her face. “Help her, Tripitaka!”

Privately thinking that the violence surely wasn’t helping matters, Tripitaka pried the pot out of her hands and held it up to what meagre light she could find. There was little enough to speak of; the moon was at its highest and brightest but still fogged by cloud and the misty night-haze that covered the ground in these parts, and the campfire had long since burned down to barely-glowing embers. Hardly the best conditions to diagnose an ailing plant, even if she were in the proper mood.

Which she definitely was not.

Still, because it clearly meant a great deal to Sandy — and would surely mean a great deal more to Pigsy if he woke and found out what was happening — she leaned in, swallowing her drowsiness, and took a good long look at it.

Not that it did much good: in truth, she had no idea what she was looking at. The plant was ill, that much was obvious, but how or why it had come to be in that state she couldn’t even begin to guess.

“I don’t know, Sandy,” she said, after a sufficiently judicious amount of time had passed. “Maybe you’ve been over-watering it. I mean, you were pretty trigger-happy with the magical sprinklers earlier, when you were...”

She stopped, watching Sandy’s expression twist into discomfort, and then outright denial.

“I know how much to give her.” Sullen and defensive now, she looked rather like she wanted to snatch the thing back and storm off with it. “I’ve been tending her for some time now.”

“I know you have,” Tripitaka said placidly. “But you’ve been through a lot, and these last couple of days haven’t been easy on you. Maybe you’re just a bit distracted at the moment.”

“No.” Stubborn now, as well as sullen; she looked and sounded like a petulant child. “This plant is Pigsy’s life. I would not be frivolous with it, no matter my feelings. I would _never_.”

Sensing this avenue was a dead-end, Tripitaka gave up with a sigh. Sandy would no more consider that she might have made a mistake than Monkey would if he were in her place. A point of pride and arrogance in him, in her it carried the cleaner, straight lines of something more personal; guilt or shame or whatever else, Tripitaka suspected she was more afraid than she’d like to admit that this really was her fault after all.

Still, she knew better than to push it, at least for the time being. She climbed to her feet instead, stretching out her stiff limbs and cursing the late hour, and dragged the little plant over to the campfire. Half-dead as well, at least the fire’s suffering could be fixed with a few dry twigs; watching as the flames reignited and began to crackle again, she thought, with a touch of sadness, _if only living things could be so easily tended_.

The extra light offered no more illumination on the problem. Tripitaka turned to Sandy and said, knowing perfectly well that she wouldn’t want to hear it, “We should ask Pigsy.”

Sandy’s full-body flinch was as painful as it was predictable. “No!”

“Sandy, he’s our plant expert. If anyone can figure this thing out...”

“No!” She looked miserable and frantic; the lines of exhaustion on her face were deeper now, thrown into bold relief by the reborn firelight, but it did nothing to smooth the edges of her panic. “He’ll yell at me, he’ll blame me. He’ll say that it’s all my fault, that I can’t even keep a small fragile thing alive, that I can’t be trusted with anything. He’ll take her away from me, Tripitaka, he’ll—”

“Sandy!” Tripitaka hated to be sharp with Sandy, who generally never meant any harm, but sometimes it was the only way to break through to her, especially when she got like this: one ragged breath away from hyperventilating. “This isn’t about you, all right? It’s about the plant. Whatever the reason, whoever may or may not be to blame, it’s sick, and Pigsy is the only one of us who knows enough about this stuff to figure out why.”

Sandy whimpered. “He’ll blame me.”

“Maybe. But at least he’ll still be alive.” That hit a nerve; Sandy flinched again, then grew very, very still. “And so will the plant, if we’re lucky. So if you could please stop panicking and wake him up so we can—”

“Wake who what where why how now?”

And now they had an audience. Perfect.

Monkey and Kaedo, both wide awake, stood on the other side of the fire, arms folded across their chests in perfect annoying mirrors of each other, staring at them with twin smirks.

And of course the only one Tripitaka actually wanted to be awake was still snoring soundly in his bedroll, dead to the world and utterly oblivious to the chaos taking place around him.

Yep. _Perfect_.

Instantly on the defensive again, Sandy tensed and planted herself firmly between Tripitaka and their two smirking spectators.

“Nothing,” she said, baring her teeth. “Go away.”

Tripitaka rolled her eyes, shouldering past her with little effort. For all that Sandy was as much of a god as Monkey or Pigsy, for all that she could quite easily make herself immovable if she wanted to, she seldom offered any physical resistance; most of the time, despite her smaller stature, Tripitaka had no more trouble shoving her aside than she would with another human of her own age. Whether that was intentional on Sandy’s part or not, she could never quite figure out, but whatever her reasons she gave in easily enough now too, stumbling and sulking away like she’d been kicked in the head.

“The plant’s not doing well,” Tripitaka explained to Monkey, when the path between them was cleared of fretting god-shaped obstacles. “We’re trying to figure out what’s wrong with it.”

Monkey’s laugh was a painful, predictable thing, as was the way he turned his smirk on Sandy. “I think we all know what’s wrong,” he quipped, lips twitching with ill-timed amusement. “The first mistake was trusting the stupid thing to _her_.”

The accusation was far from new. Pigsy had made the same point countless times since receiving the plant, clinging and clutching at every chance he could to take it into his own hands instead of leaving it to its designated caretaker. He, at least, had good reason to be mistrustful: Mycelia’s warnings that it would one day save his life. Monkey had no such justification, save the irritability of having been woken, and so Tripitaka took no shame in glaring him into silence.

“Throwing around baseless accusations helps no-one,” she said, with as much generosity as she could muster.

Sandy made a small noise of protest, turning back to stare at her. Eyes wide, head cocked to the side, she wore the devastating, heartbroken look of a kicked puppy.

“You feel the same way,” she pointed out sadly. “You think I over-watered her, or else that I was distracted.”

Tripitaka sighed. “I think—”

“I know what you think.” Then, so quietly that Tripitaka had to strain to hear her, “I know what you all think.”

The revelation was painful to both of them, but it seemed to be the incentive Sandy needed to do what needed to be done: she took a deep, shaky breath, set her jaw, then crossed over Pigsy’s bedroll, knelt at his side, and shook him awake.

Tripitaka couldn’t make out her expression. The fire, high now and burning bright, threw shadows over most of her face, and what little was still exposed was shrouded by her hair. Still, she could guess well enough how wounded she must be feeling, that it no longer seemed to scare her to think of facing Pigsy’s inevitable wrath.

He woke surprisingly easily, like perhaps a part of him was already attuned to the firelight and the chattering of his companions; he was already sitting upright before Sandy had even finished his name, blinking into her pinched, pale face, jaw set and features hard, like maybe he already knew what the problem was as well, like he’d anticipated it somehow.

Sandy swallowed hard, squared her shoulders, and confessed: “She’s not well, Pigsy. She’s dying. And I don’t know how to help her.”

She spoke, for once, without breaking eye-contact. Tripitaka knew how much of a challenge that was for her, even on her best days; it spoke of courage, or perhaps a kind of self-punishment, that she would put herself through it by choice now, unprotected as the confusion in his dark eyes boiled away to dread, then horror, and finally to vivid, visceral anger.

His eyes gleamed. His fingers, braced in the dirt, balled to fists.

“What,” he demanded in a slow, dangerous voice, “did you _do_?”

Sandy didn’t bristle this time, as she had with Tripitaka, and she made no attempt to protest her innocence. She just hung her head, swallowed another half-dozen times or so, then miserably admitted, “I don’t know.”

For a second, fleeting but terrifying, Tripitaka thought he was about to lunge for her throat. Pigsy’s anger was a rare thing indeed, but when it awoke it was like a monster; in the breath-held moment before he got it back under control, she was genuinely afraid that he would lose control of himself and do her harm.

Blessedly, it didn’t last. In many ways, Pigsy was the most placid of them all, and the easiest to mollify; a moment, no more, was all it took for his rage to burn itself out. It was over, then, as quickly as it had come, the anger giving way once more to worry and dread and fear of what this disaster meant for his survival. 

Pigsy was a smart god, even at his most tested. He knew well enough that ending Sandy’s life over a mistake like this would do nothing to help extend his own.

“Show me,” he said when he’d regained control of himself. It was a command, but there was no threat in it any more; his hands, slowly loosening from their fists, remained firmly planted on the ground, keeping him steady. “ _Now_.”

Tripitaka, stepping smoothly between them with the pot still in her hands, was all too eager to surrender to thing to his slightly more tender mercies.

“Here,” she said, thankful to be rid of it. “Sandy’s right: it’s not looking good.”

Despite his size, or perhaps because of it, Pigsy had a remarkably gentle hand when it came to tending things smaller than himself. He touched the plant with the care and diligence of one soothing a scared, damaged child, something so fragile and delicate that the least amount of pressure would break it into pieces. Tripitaka watched, fascinated somewhat in spite of herself, as his careful fingers manipulated the leaves, turning them this way and that, taking in their colour, breathing in their scent, studying them from every possible angle.

She had no idea what he was looking for, but he seemed to know well enough himself because his face held no confusion, only the same quiet focus he wore when he was cooking or foraging.

He examined the plant from top to bottom, working slowly over the leaves, down the stem, his frown growing deeper with each detail. He dug his thumb into the soil when he reached the edge of the pot, touched it delicately to his tongue, as though testing the balance of herbs in a new recipe, then he slowly raised his head and fixed Sandy with a deadly glare.

Judging by the way she recoiled, his fist would have been kinder.

“Salt,” he told her, flat and cold. “The soil’s saturated with it.”

Sandy stared at him, barely comprehending, like he was speaking in tongues. “That’s impossible.”

“ _You’re_ bloody impossible.” Where once the insult might have been veiled in fondness, now it carried nothing but anger and the heat of accusation she’d been so afraid of. “What in the seven hells did you do? Drown the thing in seawater?”

“Of course not!” If she was frightened now, she hid it well behind sullen defiance. “You’ve seen me give her water.”

“Yeah, with that weird magical finger-sprinkler thing you do. Who even knows what kind of water you get out of that?”

“ _I_ know. It’s the water kind.”

She folded her arms, and looked to Tripitaka to back her up.

Tripitaka turned away. “How do we fix it?” she asked Pigsy.

The answer was brutally predictable, spoken without warmth and with another hard look at Sandy. “We start by keeping it away from the saline plant-slayer.”

Sandy whined.

Tripitaka struggled to ignore her; it was much, much harder than it should be. “Other than that,” she pressed, as firmly as she could. “Something tangible, Pigsy, please.”

For a moment he looked like he was going to yell at her, but he held himself in check, rubbing a hand over his face as though suddenly recalling the lateness of the hour.

“Needs fresh soil,” he said instead, tone impressively flat. “That stuff’s useless now. Clean soil, clean water, and a whole lot of praying that that’ll be enough to salvage it.”

Sandy brightened considerably at that, seeing a possible means of making amends. “I can do that,” she cried, with excruciating, cock-eyed eagerness. “Let me do that!”

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough already?” Pigsy snarled, leaning back and holding the plant well out of her reach. “I’m not letting you anywhere near the blasted thing ever again.”

“But I didn’t do anything!” Her voice hitched with desperation. “I didn’t, I swear! I don’t even know what—”

“Sandy.” Tripitaka wet her lips, fought to keep her voice soft. “That’s enough.”

“I...” She floundered, clearly wanting to argue, then deflated. “Yes, Tripitaka.”

Tripitaka didn’t look at her. She couldn’t bear to see that wounded, betrayed look on her face, the feeling of being shouted down from the one corner she’d thought she was still safe. She couldn’t bear to hurt her, even as she knew that it was for the best, that she would thank her in the long-term for a moment of silence now.

She took a breath, steadied herself, then turned back to Pigsy. “I’ll do it,” she offered. “You should go back to sleep, if you can.”

Pigsy looked momentarily conflicted, his attachment to the plant — and, specifically, its ties to his own life — clashing against his obvious tiredness. “You sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked, hesitant and just a little suspicious.

“I’m no expert,” she admitted, “but I’m pretty sure I can figure it out.”

“You need to clean it off good and proper,” he said, voice rising with each word. “Gentle, though, mind: you don’t want to do it any more damage than that lunatic already has. And make sure the fresh soil is good quality, none of that mulchy forest-floor stuff. And you need to—”

“Pigsy.” It was difficult not to laugh at his needless fretting; the amusement, though perhaps indecorous given the circumstances, was a welcome relief. “I’ve got it. Relax.”

“Easy for you to say.” He glared at her, then at the plant, then over his shoulder at Sandy. “You’re not the one whose life is in the hands of a good-for-nothing plant-torturing little—”

“Please.” Sandy, interrupting with her eyes on the ground. “Let me help, Tripitaka. Even just from a distance. I can find good soil, I can navigate in the dark. Let me help.”

Monkey, nudging Kaedo lightly in the ribs like they were suddenly the best of friends, whispered, _sotto voce_ , “Right, because trusting her again couldn’t possibly end in disaster, could it?”

Kaedo ignored him. Instead, growing suddenly surprisingly serious, he said to Tripitaka, “Be careful out there.”

Tripitaka waved a hand. “There’s no demons out there. Monkey checked the perimeter like a dozen times.”

“Not demons.” His sombre expression, uncharacteristic after so much playfulness and mischief, made her straighten up and take notice. “Strange things happen in these forests at night. You need to keep your wits about you.”

Tripitaka opened her mouth to ask for more information, but Monkey cut her off with a loud, obnoxious laugh.

“Stupid fairy tales,” he snorted, then elbows Kaedo again, rather less lightly. “Kids like him believe anything.”

Sandy, ignoring them both and hearing only the parts that served her own agenda, grew frantic. “All the more reason I should go with you!” she babbled, already reaching for her scythe. “You’ll need a protector! I’ll keep you safe, I swear, I’ll—”

“Okay.” The word was a sigh, resigned and weary. “Enough, Sandy, you’ve made your point. You can come.”

As simple as that. Partly because she couldn’t bear another moment of Sandy’s desperate, helpless begging, and partly because there was actually a half-decent point somewhere in of all that fevered gibberish; whether there was any truth to Kaedo’s warnings or not, it surely wouldn’t do any harm to have a god watching her back out there in the eerie darkness of a forest at night.

Pigsy was understandably not thrilled. “You’re seriously going to let her tag along? She’s the water-brained madwoman who almost killed the bloody thing in the first place!”

Sandy scowled at him. “I did not!”

“Bloody did, you maniac.” He threw up his hands, turned back to Tripitaka, and went on, no less frenetically, “Just promise me you won’t let her within ten paces of that thing? Please? For the sake of my fraying sanity?”

Tripitaka glanced back at Sandy. Wide-eyed, mouth hanging half-open, staring down at her like she hung the moon and stars, aching and yearning and so desperate to be believed and trusted. Desperate, specifically, for Tripitaka to believe her, to trust her and trust that she was right, that she had done no harm, that she was not responsible for what had happened here.

Tripitaka wanted to give her that. Truly, she did.

But Pigsy was looking at her too, just as expectantly, just as worried and just as fearful, and with far better reason for all of those things.

The plant, settling gently in her palms as he handed it over, seemed to weigh much, much more than such a small, delicate thing should.

“I promise,” she said to him, turning her gaze away. “I won’t let her near it.”

Pigsy’s shoulders slumped with relief.

Sandy’s slumped too, with something very, very different.

“Oh,” she said, in the raw, shattered tone of one who hated herself for imagining things might have been different.

Tripitaka bit down on her tongue. The urge to apologise rose up in her, sharp and bitter on her tongue, but she swallowed it back down and did not give in. For Pigsy, who needed to know that his plant was in reliable hands, and for herself because she knew — even as she hated herself for admitting it — that this was the right decision.

“Come on,” she said, shouldering past Sandy without looking her in the eye. “Let’s get moving before the poor thing gets any sicker.”

Sandy nodded, obeyed, and followed, but she didn’t say another word.

*

She held her tongue until they were alone, and even then she only spoke after Tripitaka broke the silence first.

It was not anything she wanted to say, nor was it anything Sandy would want to hear, but one of them had to.

She waited until they were fully alone, surrounded in all directions by the midnight dark of the forest and well out of earshot of the others back at their camp. She waited until Sandy was occupied, at least to all appearances, in picking out a path through the brush, navigating by the moonlight glinting off her scythe, off the frozen water of her eyes.

Tripitaka waited, counting out the spaces between her own breaths, the space between Sandy’s, the space between their footsteps. She waited, gathering her courage, and then, at last, she whispered, “I think he’s right.”

Sandy tensed. It was the only sign she gave of having heard; her shoulders pulled tight, her spine stiffened to a perfect, impossibly straight line, and her breath stuttered in her chest.

All this in less than a heartbeat. A whole world of responses bevelled down to a fraction of a second, and then it was gone and she was moving again, sure-footed and strong, as though Tripitaka never spoke at all.

“This way.” The words were hollow, void of feeling. “There’s a clearing ahead: a still pond, lush green grass. A perfect place to rehabilitate an ailing plant.”

Convenient, to be sure. Tripitaka supposed she discovered the place earlier while out gathering firewood. Not that it mattered; Tripitaka knew evasion when she saw it, and sidestepped it. “Did you hear me?”

“Of course.” Eyes fixed on the path ahead, Sandy didn’t even spare her a backwards glance. “You said, ‘let’s get moving before the poor thing gets any sicker’, yes? Which is exactly what I’m trying to do.”

Tripitaka sighed. Most days, Sandy’s scattered obliviousness was endearing, but today it was transparent; the misunderstanding was too forced, too evasive, and she saw through it immediately. Sandy was a terrible liar, worse even than Tripitaka herself, and if the hitch in her voice hadn’t given her away already, the way she hid her face and eyes most certainly would.

“Sandy...”

But Sandy only quickened her pace, hastening through the brush like a creature possessed.

“I’m trying to save her life, Tripitaka. And his as well. This malady, wherever it came from...”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Sandy. It came from _you_.”

Again, Sandy showed no sign that she heard her at all. She left her own statement unfinished, and instead redoubled her blind-sighted focus on the world around her, propelling them both forward at a dangerous pace. Tripitaka stumbled more than once in her scramble to keep up, and very nearly dropped the little pot a few times as well; she wondered what Sandy would have to say about that, if she turned around and saw that her efforts to avoid the truth were causing so much trouble.

She must be feeling betrayed indeed, Tripitaka thought sadly, to care so little that she was making this harder for the plant and the human she was sworn to protect.

She didn’t stop, though, or turn back, or stray from her set path. She didn’t speak or glance at Tripitaka at all until they’d made it to the clearing she’d mentioned.

The shift in environment was sudden and striking. The thick frame of trees vanished, as though rent clean through, the shadows parting to reveal a moonlit glade, spacious and beautiful and glittering. It was exactly as Sandy had described it: lush greens only slightly dampened by the nocturnal darkness, a crystalline pool filled with clear water, small fish darting just below the surface. The place looked like something out of a children’s story-book.

Too good to be true, in fact.

In the back of Tripitaka’s head, she heard an echo of Kaedo’s ominous warning, uninvited and unbidden but impossible to ignore: _strange things happen in these forests at night_.

Equally unbidden, a chill ran down her spine.

The beauty of this place was undeniable, but if Tripitaka’s time on the quest had taught Tripitaka anything at all, it was not to trust too much to things that had no obvious flaws.

Sandy, either oblivious or simply not caring, turned around at last and announced, vacant and without really seeing anything, “We’re here.”

The hollow tone, the empty look in her eyes, the numbness stiffening every muscle in her body... these things chilled Tripitaka almost more than the too-clean, too-perfect aura of this place. She wanted to reach for her, wanted to apologise, if only to get that terrible look off her face, but she knew that she’d done nothing wrong. More, she knew this was a conversation they needed to have, whether Sandy wanted to or not.

“Sandy.” Her own voice echoed, sounding strange and discordant in the too-light air. “Sandy, I think—”

“We’re here.” A little less lifeless now, and a little harder; it was no less discomfiting. “This soil is rich here, and good. The water is clean and fresh. Do as you will to make her better, since I’m not allowed near her.”

The bitterness stung, more than Tripitaka would care to admit. Still, she didn’t back down, instead taking a deep, steadying breath, and trying again. “Sandy, I know you don’t want to hear it, but I think Pigsy’s right.”

“You have no proof of that.” Her voice cracked; her face paled, ethereal and ghostly under the moonlight. “You only assume it’s my fault because...”

_Because you don’t trust me._

She didn’t say it, but Tripitaka recognised the sentiment in the way she shrank herself down, arms pulled tight around herself like a child’s security blanket, the familiar self-protection of one who saw herself as hunted.

As she had been. For so many years, hunted and hated and mistrusted by everyone who saw her. Small wonder that a few moments of doubt from her closest companions would evoke such a visceral response.

“I’m not assuming anything,” Tripitaka said, trying as best she could to soothe her. “And I’m not saying you did it on purpose. I don’t think you even realise you’ve been doing it. You’re so cut off from your emotions, you don’t understand—”

“Anything, apparently.”

And she threw herself down onto the lush grass, stretched out on her back, and stared emptily up at the stars.

Biting her tongue, Tripitaka focused on the more urgent task, the one more immediately at hand. Sandy was right about that, at least: until it was healed, the plant was more important than either of them or their fragile feelings.

Thankfully, now that they’d discovered a place with abundant soil and good water, that part was easily dealt with.

Though she would never claim to be as talented as Pigsy in the art of gardening, Tripitaka was at least moderately comfortable with basic plant-care; at the very least she had a gentler touch than Sandy, who too often underestimated her own strength, or Monkey, who lacked any amount of patience for things smaller or more fragile than himself. Tripitaka knew when to show firmness and when to use a light touch, and though she had no doubt Pigsy would have achieved the task more glamorously still she had little trouble in doing what needed to be done.

It was no challenge at all, really, to clear out and replace the tainted soil, to transfer the wilting plant from old to new and ensure it settled back into its pot, to attend to its needs in this place so well suited to such a labour.

Perhaps a little too well suited, in truth. There was a sort of shimmering in the air here, light in one moment and heavy in the next, like the threat of a storm or the rush of boiling blood during a particularly heated battle.

She thought about asking Sandy if she noticed it too, but one look at her face said the question wouldn’t be welcome. Nor would it be answered, quite probably, and in any case, if Tripitaka was going to try and talk to her again they had far more pressing things to discuss. The eeriness of a strange place at night, discomfiting though it was, surely wasn’t anything new; Tripitaka had learned long ago to put such silliness and superstition out of her mind.

So she did, setting aside the strangeness of this place, Kaedo’s warnings, and the natural discomfort that came with a middle-of-the-night excursion to save a life. Never mind that the life was a plant’s; tied as it was to one of her companions’, the burden felt much heavier than it surely was. Tripitaka wasn’t sure she believed in the magical properties of the thing — or in Mycelia’s word in general, if truth be told — but he and Sandy did and that was what mattered.

Content that she’d done all she could for the thing, she brought back back to Sandy’s side, standing over her and sheepishly shuffling her feet.

“Can I sit?”

No reply from Sandy. No retreat, either, nor any of her usual telltale flinches; all of this Tripitaka took as a positive sign. Whether by necessity or simply by habit, Sandy was not shy when it came to protecting her personal space. That she wasn’t baring her teeth or hunching her shoulders now spoke of acceptance, if not quite invitation.

So she sat, holding out the plant for Sandy to examine it without getting too close. “Fresh, clean soil,” she announced. “And fresh water too. Everything she needs to make a full recovery.”

 _Hopefully_ , she did not add.

“Good.” Sandy was staring at the plant, but with the hazy half-blindness of one who wasn’t really seeing the thing in front of her. “I suppose you still think it was my fault, what happened to her?”

This, by contrast, was definitely an invitation. She wanted to hear it said, even as she knew she wouldn’t like it.

Tripitaka tried to smile, though she doubted Sandy would see it any more than she could really see the plant, or its fresh soil and fresh water.

“I think,” she said, choosing her words with care, “that you have a lot more inside you than you realise.”

Sandy laughed. Hoarse and hollow, still it gave Tripitaka hope that she was able to muster a laugh at all.

“There’s water inside me,” she said. “That’s all, Tripitaka. Only water.”

Tripitaka took a deep breath, let it out slow, and said, “Water and _salt_.”

“I’d know if I had salt in me.” Still she took a moment to contemplate the point; her eyes lost a little of their dullness, growing focused and attentive, the way she did when she was trying to grasp something just beyond her reach. Tripitaka read this as a hopeful sign, openness to listening, at least, and relaxed when Sandy shook her head and added wryly, “For a start, I suspect I’d be thirstier.”

Now it was Tripitaka’s turn to laugh, rich and relieved.

Brief, too, because for all her wryness Sandy’s expression was open and sincere, because she really didn’t understand what Tripitaka was trying to tell her, because that hurt.

“ _Tears_ , Sandy.” The word was little more than a whisper, but the stillness of the place gave it weight and made it carry. “The ones you won’t cry.”

She expected denial, resistance. Perhaps some small subconscious part of her expected anger, even outright aggression, because she found that all the muscles in her body were drawn taut with anticipation, braced to respond, to launch herself out of reach of an assault that surely would not come.

Sandy sat up.

Eyes on the pot in Tripitaka’s hand, she seemed almost oblivious to the human’s presence. One hand hovering over her own chest, the other extended, fingers splayed, reaching tentatively towards the plant. She didn’t try to touch it, no doubt afraid that Tripitaka would snatch it away from her before she could, but there was a sort of studiousness on her face now, like she was feeling for something Tripitaka couldn’t make out, seeking some lingering trace of herself in its wilting, salt-stained leaves.

“I don’t understand,” she said, looking lost and afraid.

It wasn’t unexpected. That didn’t make it less painful.

Tripitaka set the plant down on the soft, dew-damp ground, and reached for Sandy’s hand. “I know,” she said, squeezing lightly. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? You have so much pain inside you, so much _feeling_ , but you don’t know how to let it out.”

Sandy blinked down at their hands. Then, equally unsurprising, she pulled hers away. “Is this because I don’t want to talk about the things you think I should talk about?”

Tripitaka didn’t know how to say ‘yes’ without making the word into a command. She couldn’t find the path from Sandy’s confusion, always so much on the surface, to the pain buried so deep she couldn’t even touch it.

“It’s what happens,” she explained instead, navigating the delicate, difficult conversation like she would a minefield, “when we try and push down our darker feelings. There’s not enough room inside of us to hold it all. Pain will always find other ways to spill over.”

True enough; she’d seen it before, more times than she could count.

Not in gods, admittedly. Never quite like this, poured out through the mystical channels of power and magic and immortality, but in the lost souls who’d sought the Scholar’s guidance, who had come to the monastery not in search of learning or prayer but the kind of help that only the most patient and holy of men and women could provide. People in the kind of pain Sandy had lived with all her life, and people in far worse pain besides; souls gone dark with no healthy way to channel their hurts, bodies broken almost beyond recognition by neglect or self-punishment, hearts twisted into things they should never have been, distorted and damaged, bent double under the weight of suffering they could not let out.

She could not bear to see it happen again here, and to her friend.

Sandy held up a hand, studying it as though she thought it belonged to someone else. Tripitaka watched a trickle of water dance over her palm, sprinkled with starlight and—

“Salt.”

This from Sandy, revelatory and miserable. Tripitaka watched as she conjured yet more water, filling both hands, cupping it like the most precious substance in the world.

To her, of course, it was.

“You won’t talk about it,” Tripitaka reminded her. “The way that place affected you. The way it’s still affecting you. I think your body and your powers are doing the talking for you.”

She forced down the urge to touch her again, and redirected her focus to the plant; it didn’t look any better, but at least it wasn’t worse. Sandy, following her gaze, shook her head with a desperate denial. “No.”

“Yes.” Softer, but with no less urgency. “You won’t talk about it. You’re not sleeping, you won’t let me try to connect with you. And now this: salt in the water you create inside yourself.”

“It’s just salt.” She sounded frightened now. “It’s not—”

“ _Tears_.” The word was almost a sob in itself; it took her a moment to regain enough control over her voice to repeat it again. “Tears, Sandy, spilling out of you in the only way they can. Like a...”

Sandy whimpered, shook her head, and finished for her.

“Like a _child_.” A groan, a growl, a strangled sort of wail torn out of a clogged throat. “Like a scared child, imprisoned alone in the dark by a demon who would use her tears to feed itself.”

Tripitaka thought of the village, of the lonely squid demon and the children she’d captured but not killed. She thought of Sandy, facing her alone down there in the underground darkness, and she turned her face away because she couldn’t bear the look on hers: pain cut through with anger, self-directed hatred, a self-loathing so violent it was almost disgust.

“I know you feel like a child right now,” she said gently. “After what happened in that village, all the horrible memories it brought back, you must be feeling very small.”

“Quite the contrary.” Sandy was still staring into her palms, at the rippling pools of tear-tainted water. “I feel like a demon.”

The word was like a flash-fire, igniting Tripitaka’s skin and making her bite down on her tongue to keep from crying out. An automatic reaction to the creatures that caused such suffering among humans and gods alike, and a natural reaction to knowing that one of her friends saw herself through such a sickened lens. A demon, a monster, an echo of all those awful things the villagers shouted and snarled when they thought she was one.

She remembered Sandy’s words from earlier, their last aborted attempt to talk about this. _“I’ve been those children,”_ she said, face hidden in shadow, _“and I’ve been that demon.”_

“You’re not a demon,” Tripitaka forced out. “Just because she wore your face, just because she tried to—”

“She said we’re the same.” Her throat convulsed, once and then again. “She wore my face, she looked at me with my eyes, and she told me that we’re the same. That she was just like me, that I was just like her. And she was right.”

“No, she wasn’t.” This time it was Tripitaka’s voice that was shaking, and her hands as well. “She was just trying to get into your head. That’s what demons do, Sandy, you know that.”

Sandy shook her head, only partly hearing. “She said that we’re both unloved, untrusted, unwanted. And it’s true, I suppose: we are all those things. But that’s not why we’re the same.”

“Sandy.” Tripitaka swallowed, tried in vain to make herself sound stronger. “Sandy, don’t.”

“We’re the same,” Sandy pressed, ignoring her, “because we both feel at home in dark, damp places.” She let her hands fall open, let the salt-sparkling water cascade down to soak the lush green grass. “And because we both cause harm to small things. And because...” She closed her eyes, ducked her head, like she was trying to hide from herself. “And because we both understand our feelings only through the tears of children.”

She was shaking when she finished, her whole body a living tremor, like she was struggling against the words with every atom in her. If Tripitaka hadn’t been worried before, she certainly was now.

“Sandy,” she said. “You’re not—”

“Aren’t I?” She blinked her eyes open, let her gaze fall once more on the plant, and her features twisted as though in terrible pain. “You were right not to trust me. You were right to blame me for what happened... for what I did to her.”

Tripitaka sighed. “It’s not blame, Sandy. And it’s not about whether I trust you or not. Your feelings...”

“My _feelings_ could have _killed_ her.” A loud, strangled-sounding gulp, like she was trying to choke down a rock, then she shook her head and pressed on. “Those ‘darker feelings’ you claim are inside me, those things I don’t understand and don’t want to talk about. Tainting the water, the one precious gift I have, because I don’t know how to let them out or talk about them or process them like you want me to.” Her fingertips trembled, hovering a few hand-spaces over the plant, still afraid to try and touch it. “This beautiful, delicate, small thing could have withered and died, Tripitaka, all because I don’t understand my feelings.”

It was a lot. A confession, and possibly something like a cry for help. Sandy did not often accept help from others, and she definitely didn’t ask for it; that she was so close to asking now said a great deal.

“It’s okay,” Tripitaka said, because that little reassurance was the only balm she had to offer. “It’s okay if you don’t understand them, Sandy. Because you’re not like that demon in the most important way: you’re not _alone_. Stealing children to try and recapture a taste of some long-forgotten home? That’s not you. You have a home, with us. And we understand those feelings inside you. Enough that we figured out what was happening to that little plant, even when you didn’t understand it yourself, and saved her.”

She held out the plant, then, an offering and a sort of apology. Sandy stared at it, mouth half-open, as though terrified that the water held back behind her eyes would be enough to make it start withering all over again.

“I can’t,” she rasped as Tripitaka tried to ease it into her hands. “Pigsy said...”

“Pigsy isn’t here.” Tripitaka let her smile speak for her, faith and warmth and a safe, loving home. “I am. And I trust you with her.”

Sandy swallowed a few times. Her fingertips, damp and unsteady, brushed faintly over the surface of the pot. Tripitaka could feel her trembling, the fragile points of contact where their hands grazed each other. She didn’t let go, instead shifting so she was holding them both: the delicate little plant and the delicate, not-quite-so-little god who cared so deeply.

“I wish,” Sandy whispered, broken and confessional. “I wish I understood my feelings better. I wish I could let them out like you want me to. I wish I was...”

Tripitaka studied their hands, side by side, barely touching. She could feel the water beading on Sandy’s skin; she didn’t have to taste it to know it was rich with salt.

“I wish that too,” she said softly. “More than anything, I wish for you...”

But not just for Sandy, she realised as she said it. For the others as well.

For Monkey, who communicated only through bravado and ego and showmanship, who would pick fights with a young boy simply because he knew he would win. For Monkey, who would surely be no better equipped to deal with his own responses if he’d been through what Sandy had in that village, who could no more face his darker feelings than Sandy could understand hers.

And for Pigsy, too, always so fixated on his own survival, his own comfort, his own self. For Pigsy, so blind to what was happening around him that he would place blame without waiting for cause. Tripitaka had her reasons for suspecting Sandy’s part in injuring the plant; she had seen her, watched her struggle against feelings she didn’t understand, just as she had seen those feelings overflow many times in countless other lost souls.

But Pigsy’s accusations had been founded in prejudice alone, in the presumption that Sandy was not worthy of tending the plant that would save his life, that she didn’t value it — or him — highly enough.

That no-one did, perhaps.

Self-preservation, taken to its extremes. As with Monkey, hiding his insecurities behind bravado, as with Sandy too, who hadn’t cried since she was one of those lost, abandoned children, who had lived as a demon for so long she still couldn’t understand how to be anything else. All three of them, Tripitaka thought sadly, each with their own dark feelings, their own hidden struggles that she, mortal and human and so much smaller than the smallest of them, could never truly touch.

She wished for more, for each of them. Peace with their struggles, peace with their pain. Peace with their feelings, and a safe place to let those things out without such self-destructive behaviours.

She wished, and she covered Sandy’s hand with her own, the two of them cradling the pot and its plant like guardians, and she let the moonlight wash over all three of them, cleansing and powerful.

“We should go back,” she whispered at last, gazing at the moon’s reflection in Sandy’s pale, tearless eyes. “We’ve done all we can.”

Sandy looked at her, then at the plant. Then, with the dazed slowness of one waking from a dream, she held up her free hand and let her fingertips bead with water.

“Yes,” she said, sounding very far away. “As you wish, Tripitaka.”

It was the last time she would speak her name for a very long time.

*


	3. Chapter 3

*

When Tripitaka returned to her bedroll, less than an hour later, she didn’t know what she expected.

A return to the status quo, maybe. A neat, clean line drawn under the plant debacle, and perhaps a touch more self-awareness from Sandy. Nothing overwhelming, of course; she knew Sandy well enough that she didn’t expect miracles on that front, nor did she expect Pigsy to let her take charge of the plant again for a good long while. A little lingering conflict between them, to be sure, the natural fallout of such an unpleasant incident, but certainly nothing cataclysmic.

Foolishly, idealistically — _humanly_ , as her gods would say — she assumed that when she woke again in the morning it would be to something close to normal.

Monkey and Kaedo bickering over some substanceless ego-driven nonsense, scowling and pouting and pretending they didn’t both thrive in it. Sandy keeping her distance, brooding quietly, cleaning her scythe or watching the fire, generally being her usual strange self. Pigsy already working on breakfast, humming to himself and perhaps keeping a closer than usual eye on his plant.

The same routine, if just a little bruised and tender: this was what she expected.

What she got...

What she got, of course, was nothing like that.

Once again, she was woken roughly, shaken back to consciousness by a twitchy, bemused Kaedo. It was a far cry from the frantic violence she’d gotten from Sandy last night, and the warmth of morning sunlight was a welcome change from the dim moon and the nocturnal chill, but even so it was another unwanted, rude awakening from a companion who should frankly know better.

As she sat up and scrubbed a hand across her sleep-lined face, Tripitaka couldn’t help thinking the whole routine was getting old, and she took no shame in telling him so, loudly and using rather colourful language.

Kaedo, cheerfully ignoring her, gave her shoulder another shake.

“Get up.” The little troublemaker wasn’t even _trying_ to keep his voice at a tolerable level, Tripitaka thought sourly. “Seriously, you’ve got to see this.”

“Unless it’s a hot cup of tea and a plate of breakfast foods,” Tripitaka grumbled, fumbling half-blind for her blankets, “I’m fairly certain that I don’t.”

“Oh, you really, _really_ do.”

And he yanked the blankets away, exposing her to the hazy sun and his exceptionally annoying young face.

Alas, his expression made it clear that he was sincere. As much as Tripitaka generally sided with Monkey on the subject of their newest tag-along — that for all his experience and expertise, he was, at heart, just a boy with no place on a grown-up quest — Kaedo wasn’t generally prone to dramatics the way her three gods were. Mature for any age, for all his shortness of stature, the gleam she saw in his eye, though amused, was also serious, and the taut line of his jaw spoke of something genuinely important.

She groaned, stretched, and stumbled to her feet. “You’d better not be pranking me, kid.”

“Nice choice of insults,” he said, with what she was sure was a poorly-suppressed giggle.

And he herded her towards the fire, burning low, and the three figures huddled around it.

Tripitaka blinked. 

And blinked some more.

And blinked a whole lot more.

“Is that...?”

She didn’t need Kaedo’s self-satisfied giggles to answer the question. It was staring her right in the face.

Two boys, maybe a year or so younger than Kaedo, with a small, wild-haired toddler asleep at their feet.

The first of the boys, heavyset and impressively tall for his age, stood shuffling his feet and staring shyly at the ground. His size and stature alone were more than enough to give away his identity, but even if they weren’t she would surely have guessed it from the mop of unruly curls atop his head and the oversized shirt, recognisably Pigsy’s, falling off his shoulders.

The other boy, standing belligerently with his feet apart and his fists raised in a threat, was wearing a moody, suspicious expression and, rather more worrying, the Monkey King’s crown.

As for the toddler...

Notwithstanding the peculiar fact that it seemed to actually be sleeping peacefully for once, its identity was no less obvious than the others. Even if it wasn’t wrapped up and swaddled in Sandy’s cloak, Tripitaka would surely recognise that tangled mass of pale, unmanageable hair anywhere. 

Unmistakable, every one of them. Smaller, yes, and a whole lot younger, but there was no escaping or denying it: they were, all three, her gods.

What was less readily apparent, however, was—

“ _How_!?”

The boy wearing Monkey’s crown — no, the boy who _was_ Monkey, long flowing hair and gleaming dark eyes and all — let out a squeaky growl and stepped forward. Fists raised in a threat, lips curled in a warning, the attempt at intimidation nonetheless fell flat, smothered by his small, undeveloped figure and the fact that he, like Pigsy, was still wearing the oversized, ill-fitting clothes of his older self.

If the whole situation wasn’t so much of a shock, if she weren’t still trying to figure out what she was dealing with, Tripitaka might have laughed.

“Keep the noise down, stupid human,” he hissed, familiarly protective and oblivious to her poorly-smothered amusement. “You’ll wake the brat.”

Tripitaka let that sink in.

It answered one important question, at least: he didn’t recognise her.

Whether that made things more complicated or less, she had no idea.

Still, it was a start, and she went with it.

“Sorry.” She lowered her voice, as much to placate him as to avoid waking the oblivious, slumbering toddler; she was in no position to start fielding tantrums from either one of them right now. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened.”

“Me too,” the other boy piped up, in a husky rumble.

 _Pigsy_ , Tripitaka’s mind supplied helpfully, albeit a strangely shy and soft-spoken version of him. He was still looking down, not at the tiny bundle drowsing at his feet, but at his own boots, unwieldly and obstructively too big for his feet. As large as he was for a boy his age, he seemed almost to be drowning in Pigsy’s clothes, with one hand on his belt to hold up his trousers and the other tugging nervously at the collar of his massive, dirt-streaked shirt.

Guessing that he was at least fractionally more mature than Monkey, Tripitaka turned her attention to him. “I don’t suppose you remember how you got here?”

Though she was clearly not addressing him, it was of course Monkey who answered. Much like his older self, he seemed to assume that every word was meant for him alone, and never mind all evidence to the contrary.

“Nope,” he said, with the cocksure confidence of one who assumed his own experience was universally everyone’s. “Went to sleep on Jade Mountain, woke up here. Wherever here is.” He narrowed his eyes. “Where _is_ here?”

A simple enough question in theory, but a difficult one to answer in practice. Tripitaka had only a short time to consider it, as Monkey’s eyes were darkening more and more with every moment she didn’t respond; he was suspicious, and, given the circumstances, probably rightly so.

“It’s complicated,” she told him carefully. “Something happened to you. I’m not entirely sure what, but it—”

“ _Obviously_.” If he stumbled over the word, its long syllables fitting awkwardly in his young, ill-educated mouth, Tripitaka was polite enough not to draw attention to it. “I wanna know _what_. What happened, and who done it.”

“Yeah, we all wanna know that,” Kaedo quipped.

Monkey ignored him. He was looking Tripitaka up and down, taking in her monk’s robes, her shaved head, her obvious humanity, lip curling with a derision she hadn’t seen from him since the day they first met. It made her uncomfortable, and perhaps a little angry as well; she’d thought she was past the point of proving herself to him.

Apparently not, because when he spoke to her again it was with an air of smug authority that made her want to smack him.

“Can’t be you,” he decided, with a well-that’s-that sort of finality. “Puny humans can’t do nothing to awesome gods like me.”

Tripitaka rolled her eyes. “You mean ‘anything’.”

Monkey returned the gesture, and stuck out his tongue too for good measure. “I mean ‘stupid dumb puny human’.” Then, lighting up with characteristic excitement, “I’ll bet it was demons!”

“Not everything is demons,” Kaedo pointed out reasonably. “You gods always underestimate us humans.”

Tripitaka did not like the way he said that, or the none-too-subtle glance he shot in her direction.

“If you’ve got something to share, Kaedo,” she snapped, feeling her temper starting to fray. “Just say it.”

He snickered again, boyish and immature, then coughed and sobered when she sharpened her glare.

“I did warn you,” he said, cool and infuriatingly smug. “Remember? ‘Be careful out there’, strange things happen in these forests at night’, ‘keep your wits about you’. Any of this ringing any bells?” Off her rising impatience, he waved a hand and added, somewhat unnecessarily, “ _Clearly_ , you touched something you shouldn’t have.”

 _Clearly_. Tripitaka fought the urge to roll her eyes again.

“We didn’t touch anything,” she insisted, emphasising the plural so that he might remember she hadn’t been alone out there. “Sandy found us a nice clearing, we re-potted Pigsy’s stupid plant, then we came right back to camp.”

Kaedo looked like he was one ill-advised impulse away from following Monkey’s lead and sticking out his tongue. “So you’re saying this just happened out of nowhere?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying!” She heard her voice rising, felt her own maturity starting to waver. “I mean, I don’t _know_ , Kaedo. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“Uh huh.” His eyes flashed, amusement with just the faintest hint of playfulness. “Then again, I suppose they’re not _that_ different from how they were before. Him, especially.”

This last was aimed at Monkey, who, being savvy enough to recognise that he was being insulted but not familiar enough with the situation to grasp how, made a rude gesture.

“Watch your mouth, human child!” His small, overconfident threats were no less intimidating to a boy his own age, it seemed, than they had been to Tripitaka. “Do you even know who you’re talking to?”

Kaedo yawned obnoxiously. “The Monkey King. Protector of the gods, slayer of the demon Davari, finder of scrolls, master of riddles, rescuer of the lost children, and Great Sage Equal of Heaven. Blah, blah, blah. Did I miss anything?”

Tripitaka felt a headache starting to form behind her eyes, thick and pulsing and miserable. “Could you two please stop bickering for five seconds?” she begged, rather more sharply than she intended. “I’m trying to think, here.”

“Uh, yeah. Good luck with that.” This from Pigsy, seemingly the only one among them — herself included, much to her chagrin — who was still able to speak calmly. “Because ‘five seconds’ is about all you’ve got.”

Tripitaka frowned.

Then she looked down, at the little toddler-shaped cloak bundle at his feet, previously silent but now starting to move.

Then she frowned a whole lot more.

Monkey, noticing the shift in his companions’ attention, followed their gazes, then blanched deathly pale and leaped backwards.

“Oh, sh—”

That was as far as he got before the wailing began.

*

Just last night Tripitaka would have given anything to see Sandy cry.

Now, barely a few hours later, she’d give anything to make her stop.

She bawled like the small, scared thing she was, a child too young to understand what was happening her, certainly too young to grasp the nuances of her strange new situation, a child, young and small and mostly alone, knowing nothing except that she’d woken up in a place she did not recognise, surrounded by scary strangers.

And she was completely and utterly inconsolable.

Tripitaka, who had little enough experience with older kids like Pigsy and Monkey, had practically none with near-infants, and she proved about as talented at placating the howling toddler as she was at unravelling what had happened in the first place.

Which was to say, not at all.

She tried the monastic approach, the way she was sure the Scholar would have handled this: using kindness and patience and trying to show understanding. Placating small children was well beyond her comfort zone, true enough, but fear and pain were as familiar to her as her own robes. She crouched in front of the sobbing child, both hands held out in front of her, palms open and facing up, and whispered her name as soothingly as she could, over and over again, in the hopes that Sandy would hear it and see that she was known.

It did not work.

Sandy stopped crying for approximately two seconds, stared at Tripitaka with her head cocked confusedly to one side, then shoved her away with tiny fists and resumed her wailing at an even more ear-splitting pitch.

Tripitaka, thrown rather more off-balance than she’d care to admit by such a little thing, fell back on her heels. Reeling and completely out of her element, she turned to the others with pleading, hopeful eyes.

“I don’t suppose any of you have any experience with this?”

Pigsy and Kaedo exchanged bemused looks.

Monkey, being exactly the same arrogant self-assured god no matter his age or size, sauntered forwards with familiar self-confidence. “Step back, human, and let the expert handle this!”

Tripitaka rather doubted the pint-sized Monkey King was an expert in anything at all, least of all something like this, but being rather at a loss for other options, she did as he said.

Given the freedom to do as he liked, Monkey dropped to his haunches in front of the yowling Sandy. He studied her for a beat or two — another momentary lapse in Sandy’s wailing as she mirrored him, staring back with suspicious, narrowed eyes — then, when she shoved him too, turned his attention instead to the knots and tatters of her old clothing. The pool of hole-riddled black was all but drowning her, and so Tripitaka naturally assumed he was trying to disentangle the child from the mess.

Not so, apparently; he made no apparent attempt to extricate her or rearrange the clothing to make her more comfortable. Instead, he seemed to be hunting for something.

It was only when he pulled a small object out from the mass of fabric and leather that she realised what.

“A distraction!” he crowed, holding up the bare blade of Sandy’s belt-knife with obvious pride. Then, addressing the confused, still-whimpering toddler like she was a puppy, “Here, kiddo, kiddo...”

Tripitaka lunged at him. “We don’t give bladed weapons to infants, Monkey!”

Monkey glared as she snatched the thing out of his hands before he or Sandy could do themselves an injury. “I was just trying to help,” he pouted, looking every inch the sullen pre-adolescent he was. “Humans are so weak.”

“She’s not human,” Tripitaka told him, sheathing the knife safely on her own belt with the fangkris. “She’s a god, just like you. That is, she will be when she grows up.” Double-checking that the knife was secured, she levelled Monkey with another stony scowl. “ _If_ she grows up.”

Monkey blinked, seeming genuinely thrown. “That scrawny crying little thing is gonna be a _god_?”

Then he threw his head back and laughed like it was the funniest joke he’d ever heard in his life.

Perhaps somehow sensing that she was being insulted, or perhaps simply a miniature master in the art of comic timing, Sandy yowled and punched him in the nose.

Monkey reared back, glaring daggers at the little toddler. He didn’t quite give in to the temptation to punch her back, thank the heavens, but it was clearly a close thing.

“Just throw her off a cliff,” he grumbled, in a that-solves-that sort of voice, then jumped to his feet and stormed off to the opposite side of the camp.

Tripitaka watched him go. Shuffling his feet, struggling in his efforts to keep his older self’s boots from falling off, holding his clothing in place with both hands, he was a vision of ridiculousness. She might have laughed if she wasn’t already exhausted and fighting a headache; as it was, she could only muster a weary flicker of relief that he seemed content to keep within the bounds of the camp. Arrogant as he was, even in youth, at least he had the good sense to keep from running off alone in an unknown place.

For now.

Standing at her other side, fiddling with the hem of his shirt, Pigsy piped up, “Let me... that is, um... may I try?”

Too tired to try to figure out whether this was a good or bad idea, Tripitaka just sighed and said, “No blades, okay?”

Pigsy’s chuckle, awkward but polite, gave her some confidence.

He was no less clumsy in his movements than Monkey had been, having a similarly difficult time keeping his oversized clothes about his person. Heaving another drained sigh, Tripitaka realised they’d probably have to double back and find a village willing to outfit their newly youthful companions in more age- and size-appropriate apparel.

Another waste of time and money they could not afford, she thought miserably, and this without any clue to how long the transformation would last.

She needed to figure this thing out, and fast.

She needed Monkey to stop sulking, Sandy to stop sobbing, and Kaedo to stop smirking.

She needed to be able to _think_. She needed—

She took a deep, cleansing breath, massaged her temples, and watched as Pigsy set to work.

His method, while not so very different from Monkey’s, nonetheless took a much more toddler-friendly approach. Distraction, but on Sandy’s own terms, and with something rather less dangerous than a knife.

Moving slowly and carefully so as not to upset or startle her, he tore a modest-sized strip of fabric from his shirt, wrapped it around itself a couple of times, and bound it with loose thread in the centre, manipulating the whole into a crude animal shape: a makeshift toy, Tripitaka realised, or the closest approximation to one he could managae with what few resources he had.

She watched him carefully, a little awed in spite of herself at his resourcefulness and diligence. He resembled so closely the Pigsy she knew, the Pigsy she had watched labour with love over their meals, the Pigsy who always took so much care and gave so much attention to everything he set his hand or mind to, who she and the others so often and so casually took for granted.

Sandy was watching him too. Her eyes were still wet and her mouth was quivering with the ever-present threat of more tears, but for now she was quiet and wholly attentive.

Pigsy smiled down at her when he was finished. He held the little cloth package up to the sunlight for a moment, examining his handiwork, then, when he was satisfied, held it out to Sandy like it was the most precious gift in the whole world.

“What do we reckon?” he asked, gentle and very soft. “A little friend for you.”

Sandy squealed, not with fear or misery this time, but with pure, unrestrained delight. She snatched the thing out of his hands, seemingly as lightning-fast in infancy as when she was grown, then clutched it tightly to her chest and declared, “Fishy!”

Pigsy rubbed the back of his neck, smiling a little but still noticeably self-conscious. “Uh, it was kind of meant to be a sheep. But, err...” He shrugged, watching Sandy giggle and cradle the thing in her arms. “Okay, sure. Fishy it is.”

For the blessed, beautiful quiet that followed, Tripitaka could have hugged him.

She would have done so, even, without a moment’s hesitation, if he were still the Pigsy she knew. But he was a child now as well, if not quite so prone to sulking and scowling as the miniature Monkey, and he too was stuck in a place he didn’t know surrounded by strangers he’d never met; though she had no doubt he could hold his own if he needed to, the last thing she wanted to do was startle him.

In any case, it was readily apparent from his body language that this version of Pigsy was self-conscious and shy, a far cry from the cool and easy-going god she knew and loved; she might know everything about him, even when he looked like this, but he knew nothing about her, and she had a sneaking suspicion that throwing herself at him in gratitude would do very little to soothe his nervousness.

So, instead, though it barely scratched the surface of her relief, she just offered him a warm, safely distanced smile, and said, “Thank you.”

Pigsy nodded, patted the tiny Sandy on the head, then shuffled away, once again keeping his gaze locked on his massive, ill-fitting boots.

One crisis averted, at least for now. Sandy seemed content for the time being to play quietly with her new toy, and while Monkey was clearly still in a foul mood, at least he wasn’t doing anything reckless or dangerous or trying to run away. Pigsy, ever the most mature of the three, no matter their respective ages, had settled himself down near the ashes of the fire, staring fixedly at the ground and not speaking, seeming happy to wait for someone else to figure this out and give him some kind of instruction.

As for Kaedo...

Kaedo, always happy to destroy a peaceful moment, was stalking back to Tripitaka’s side with a determined look on his face and Monkey’s scroll-case in his hand.

“Can we please get back to the ‘how’ part now?” he demanded, plonking himself down with a haughty huff.

It was a good point, notwithstanding the needless attitude. An important question, and one they desperately needed to answer if they were to have any hope of resolving this.

Still, as she sighed and took the scrolls, Tripitaka couldn’t help wondering if five minutes’ peace really would have been so much to ask for.

*

The Scroll of Knowledge, as annoying as Kaedo in its own way, was both informative and utterly unhelpful.

“What happened to my friends?” Tripitaka asked it, high-voiced and already exhausted, and the scroll took a frankly unnecessary amount of time to consider its response.

 _Be careful what you wish for_ , it told her at last, and she immediately wished it hadn’t bothered to answer at all.

She was also fairly sure the stupid thing was smirking at her.

Kaedo, leaning over her shoulder as she read the words aloud, was definitely smirking at her. “I _knew_ you did something!” he crowed with an air of triumphant glee that could have rivalled Monkey at his most obnoxious.

Tripitaka, biting down on the inside of her cheek, reminded herself that Kaedo was only a boy, that he could not be expected to show the maturity of a full-grown adult, and that the Scroll of Knowledge was a precious and holy relic, not a tool for smacking smug little know-it-alls upside the head.

That mantra lodged firmly in her head, she blocked out Kaedo’s smirking and snickering, and forced herself to think.

Pigsy’s plant, apparently the source of all this trouble, sat where they’d left it last night, still and unobtrusive beside his bedroll. It was looking much better this morning, its leaves bright and fresh, the soil clean and dark and free from salt; Tripitaka thought back to the clearing where they’d found the stuff, the lush, vibrant greens of the grass, the perfect rich soil, the crystalline lake with its clear, fresh water. Everything they’d needed, idyllic and beautiful, and—

 _Perfect_ , Tripitaka had thought at the time, and she wondered again now if it had been, after all, a little _too_ perfect.

It wouldn’t be the first time that something too good to be true had backfired, exploding disastrously in her face.

“You could’ve been more specific,” she huffed at Kaedo, still working through all the pieces inside her head. “I mean, ‘strange things’ could mean anything from demons, to mysterious flowery strangers handing out life-saving magical plants to unsuspecting gods, to soul-devouring fungus people.”

Kaedo eyed the scroll smugly. “Or, you know... finding a too-good-to-be-true clearing in a creepy forest that miraculously provides you with everything you need?” He let that sit for just a beat, then pressed, “Did it never occur to you that a place like that might be hiding some kind of insidious wish-fulfilment magic?”

Tripitaka glared. “Who thinks that!?”

Kaedo didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, growing rather more serious, he asked, “What did you wish for?”

It was a good question. Tripitaka thought back again, trying to remember.

“Not me,” she realised aloud, with an uncomfortable glance back at the three pint-sized gods. “Sandy. She... we were talking about what happened back in the village. The squid demon, she got into her head. She kept talking about how they were the same. That they both lived in the dark and hurt small things, that they both only understood their feelings through...”

 _Through the tears of children_.

She didn’t want to say that part aloud. It didn’t seem fair, sharing Sandy’s pain with someone like Kaedo, young and thoroughly lacking in empathy, and certainly when the god herself was in no condition to say it was okay.

“Right, sure, whatever.” Kaedo, being typically uninterested in the emotional details, waved a careless, impatient hand. “Blah, blah, blah, spare me the angsty god feelings. What, exactly, did she wish for?”

“To better understand those ‘angsty god feelings’,” Tripitaka shot back acidly. “I kept pushing her to talk about them and she couldn’t. She wanted to be able to do that... to be able to understand them and express them like I wanted her to, and...” She could feel the heat rising to her face, shame and realisation rushing in to colour her cheeks in a damning shade of guilt-stricken pink. “And I... um, I _may_ have thought that it would be good for the others too. Monkey and Pigsy, you know how stunted they can be. I thought... that is, I...”

“You _wished_.”

Tripitaka ground her teeth until her jaw started to hurt. “Stop smirking, Kaedo. This isn’t funny.”

“Oh, it’s hilarious.” Still, he swiftly sobered. “But it’s also really serious. What were you thinking?”

“Shockingly,” she deadpanned, “not about anything like _this_.”

But then, of course, Sandy was. Thinking about exactly this, in fact. The tears of children, she’d said, and all the terrible ways that a lost god and a squid demon were unable to process or express their darker feelings. Both creatures of the sea, dwellers of the dark and the damp, both called monsters by all who saw them, and both of them drowning small living things in salt without ever shedding a tear of their own.

Fitting, Tripitaka supposed grudgingly, that whatever magic did this would latch on to that part of her wish.

Perhaps it really was the only way to get Sandy to cry, to get her to feel things, really and truly, unfettered; hadn’t she said as much last night, explaining to Monkey why children made the perfect victims for a sea-dwelling demon? Hadn’t she, Tripitaka, pieced it together without even needing to hear the words spoken?

Children, small and vulnerable, so many feelings all on the surface, unchained and unashamed. _“They cry so easily,”_ Sandy had told them, and Tripitaka had realised, _because they haven’t yet learned to hide their pain_.

She looked back at the little toddler now, all wrapped up and mostly hidden in her adult-self’s cloak, cuddling with a poorly-made toy fish, still whimpering a little even now, so afraid of this strange new place and these strange new people who weren’t the family she knew. She had no idea that in a few years’ time there would be nothing left of the family she was crying for, nothing but rejection and abandonment, and lifetimes upon lifetimes of loneliness.

All of a sudden, the helpless frustration that had been threatening to consumer her melted away, dissolving into a sorrow so profound it almost choked her.

“We’ll fix this,” she said to Kaedo, feeling a sudden sting in her throat. Then, to the Scroll of Knowledge, with quirt determination, “How do we fix this?”

The scroll’s answer was long-winded and annoying, as was rather typical of its responses. It spewed out two full pages’ of condescension, the basic crux of which boiled roughly down to:

 _You can’t. Sorry about that_.

Kaedo, maddeningly smug and apparently far more talented than Tripitaka at rolling with the punches, said, “You really don’t know anything at all about wish-fulfilment magic, do you?”

Tripitaka bit down on her tongue. _He’s just a boy,_ she reminded himself for the hundredth time. As arrogant as Monkey, yes, and considerably more worldly at the present moment, but ultimately still just a little boy. Not much older than their newly de-aged gods, and surely deserving the same amount of patience as any one of them.

Even if he had no intention of giving her the same in return.

“Maybe I don’t,” she admitted, in answer to his question. “But it doesn’t exactly take a genius to figure it out, does it? They’re stuck like this until whatever magic is involved believes itself fulfilled.” She drew herself up to her full height, less than a hair’s width taller than him. “It’s not exactly complicated, Kaedo.”

“So says the monk who wasn’t smart enough to stay away from it in the first place.” He rolled his eyes, then glanced warily at the plant. “You might want to think about repotting that thing again, though. Ideally with soil that didn’t come from a creepy magical wish-fulfilling clearing. You know, just to be safe.”

It was a very good point. Unfortunately...

“The plant is the least of our worries right now,” Tripitaka reminded him. “We need to get those kids into clothes that fit. We need to get them fed, we need to get them safe. The rivertowns are two days behind us now, and who knows how far ahead the next town or village is. If you’ve got any ideas...”

To his credit, Kaedo actually took some time to consider this.

“Not sure we ought to be moving them,” he mused. “They’re hard enough to keep in line when they’re all sitting still in the same place.” He grew very serious, then, in that way he had of making even Tripitaka sit up and take note. “Besides, if the demons catch wind of this, they’ll be on us in seconds. So maybe it’s not the brightest idea to parade an army of freaked-out god-kids around for every stranger we pass on the road to see?”

It wasn’t what Tripitaka wanted to hear. It was, however, probably what she needed to, and she conceded that with a sigh. “You’re way too smart for your age. You know that?”

“I’ve heard it said,” he retorted with another one his cheeky grins.

Tripitaka let that slide. “So what, then? Because I’m out of ideas.”

“I might have one.”

This, he said with a daring, mischievous gleam in his eye, so smug and self-satisfied that Tripitaka had to wonder if he’d been entertaining this ‘idea’ from the moment he woke up and discovered their predicament. It was a telling, worrying look, making it simultaneously clear that, in the first, he was dreadfully pleased with himself and, in the second, she — all of a sudden the only functional adult in the immediate vicinity — would surely not share that sentiment.

Still, because there was little left to lose, and less with every passing second, she sighed and pressed, “Well?”

Kaedo didn’t answer. At least, he didn’t answer Tripitaka directly.

Instead, he turned his head towards the cluster of small gods, raised his voice and bellowed, “Hey, Monkey! I hear you have a magic cloud that’ll take you anywhere you want!”

Predictably, Monkey perked up immediately. “You heard right, annoying human child!”

Tripitaka, feeling what little control she might have had over the situation beginning to crumble underneath her feet, dropped her head into her hands and moaned, “Kaedo, _no_.”

Kaedo ignored her, of course. Why stop now, when he had the Monkey King eating out of his hand?

“Less of the ‘human child’ stuff,” he told him, puffing out his chest. “You’re more of a child than I am right now, so how about showing a little respect for your elders, huh?”

Monkey pouted. “Fine. You heard right, annoying human munchkin!”

“That’s... not really better.” Still, he let it go, turning back to Tripitaka with only a fraction more seriousness. “The people of the rivertowns are already in our debt. The cloud can get him there in the blink of an eye, he can buy some supplies super-quick, and be back here before anyone even notices.”

Tripitaka was unmoved. “Absolutely — and I cannot stress this enough — _not_.”

“Stop being so stubborn.” He looked and sounded so exasperated, so much like she herself felt when Monkey dug his heels in and refused to do something they both knew was right; if the situation had been different she might have found it amusing rather than simply depressing. “You know it’s the quickest and easiest way to get supplies.”

“It’s also the most dangerous!”

“Please. It’ll be a cinch.”

“It’s _Monkey_.” She gulped a couple of steadying breaths, struggling to keep her voice down lest the already-temperamental Monkey overhear her insulting him. “You know how unpredictable he is, even when he’s fully grown. And he couldn’t keep a low profile even if his life depended on it. If we let him go flying around on that thing, he’ll give us away to every demon within a thousand leagues. And that’s assuming, _generously_ , he doesn’t just go flying off on his own to who-knows-where the instant he’s out of our reach!”

Kaedo made a dismissive, irritable noise. Apparently he didn’t see any problem in any of this.

“You still control the crown,” he reminded her, with a sadistic little smirk. “If he causes any trouble, or if he looks like he’s going to do something stupid, you can just...”

He pressed his finger to his lips, mimicking the crown sutra, and Tripitaka slapped his hand away like it was burning.

“I am _not_ using the crown sutra on a child,” she snapped. “No matter how infuriating he is.”

“Uh huh. Good luck with that.” He snickered again, making her want to do rather more than just smack his hand. “Fine, then. Since you’re so uptight about the whole thing, I’ll go with him.”

“You.” Tripitaka massaged her temples. Was it possible to have multiple headaches at the same time, she wondered. “As in... you.”

“As in, yeah.” He crossed his arms, as though daring her to tell him this wasn’t a brilliant plan. “You trust _me_ , right?”

Finally, a question with an easy answer: “Even less than I trust _him_.”

She didn’t expect that to stop him, and it didn’t; like Monkey, once he had an idea in his head nothing short of pinning him down or tying him to a tree would deter him.

Fair enough in this case, she supposed, heaving a sigh as he strutted over to Monkey’s side. She had no better ideas herself, after all, and notwithstanding the near-impossibility of getting even a fully grown Monkey King to do as he was told, Kaedo hadn’t been wrong when he’d insisted that it was the least messy solution to their problems.

Trusting two pre-pubescent boys with their meagre funds was another concern entirely, of course, but as tempted as Tripitaka was sometimes to dismiss Kaedo as just another of her pint-sized problems, he had proven himself a reliable and resourceful ally on more than one occasion; he was insufferable, yes, and occasionally infuriating, but he had a maturity about him — at least when he and Monkey weren’t bringing out the worst in each other — that she did, ultimately, trust.

A little bit.

Maybe.

Not that she would ever say it to his face.

So, then, she watched from a distance and did not interfere as they spoke to each other in low, conspiratorial tones, a vision of two typical young boys clearly planning mischief together. It did little to settle her nerves, nor did it make her any more eager to stand idly by as they few off into the unknown with only Kaedo’s pre-adolescent promise that they wouldn’t get into trouble.

Given the choice and the freedom, she would have insisted on going with Monkey herself, but she was even less inclined to leave a small, scared toddler alone in the middle of nowhere in the care of two young boys. Kaedo, while she might not trust him to watch over a miniaturised Sandy without supervision, at least knew how to take care of himself. And Monkey...

Monkey, thoroughly enamoured with the idea of being given a task with responsibility, was already pouring out his ego to anyone who would listen.

“You know,” he was saying, flexing his skinny, undeveloped arms, “my Master says I’m the most powerful god he’s ever known.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, he kind of said ‘maybe’ or something. But that totally means ‘totally’, right?”

Tripitaka fought back her sixteenth headache of the morning. “Sure, Monkey.”

She took little shame in leaving him to Kaedo. It was his plan, after all, and he was admittedly somewhat better qualified than she was at handling Monkey in this particular state. Their sudden closeness in age was a boon, of course, but they’d communicated on the same level even before all this; they had the same shades of immaturity, both of them hyper-competitive, ego-driven, and hungry for attention, both of them arrogant and self-satisfied, and their egos clashed in both conflicting and complementary ways.

In this, at least, it was more of the latter. Kaedo engaged with Monkey in the same way he would surely have wanted engagement himself if he were a newly-de-aged god. He didn’t try to encourage or cajole him, didn’t try to talk him into behaving himself or coax him with promise of rewards; instead, he took a more combative, aggressive approach.

He challenged him, he needled him, he dared him to do a good job and implied he didn’t believe he could manage it; he played up his own talents and strengths, downplaying Monkey’s at the same time, stating loudly and emphatically his doubts that the young god was capable of making it through a simple shopping trip unaided and without getting himself into trouble.

It worked remarkably well.

“Anything a stupid human can do,” Monkey gritted out, defensive and broody, “I can do, like, a _zillion_ times better.”

Kaedo yawned, exaggerated and obnoxious. “Oh, yeah?”

“Uh-huh, _yeah_. Did you not hear the part where I’m the best and most awesome god on Jade Mountain?”

“Whatever.” Another yawn, this one going in for the kill. “Talk’s cheap, ‘Monkey King’. Gotta prove it.”

“ _Fine_. I _will_.”

And that, it seemed, was that. Monkey whistled for his cloud, Kaedo smirking at his side, and Tripitaka had to bite down on every instinct in her body to keep from staging an intervention.

A part of her desperately wanted to — perhaps a part that was more protective of her charges than she’d care to admit — but she held her tongue and kept her arms at her sides.

She had to trust that Kaedo, at least, would be able to keep his own head on straight while playing up the immaturity that Monkey responded to so well. She had to trust that he could keep the Monkey King in line when she wasn’t there, that communicating with him on his level was enough to keep his ego leashed and bound and at least mostly out of trouble.

She didn’t know if she could trust to any of those things, but she had no choice but to try.

It felt strange to be so powerless, to be so much out of her depth. Dealing with Monkey when he was himself was challenging enough most of the time, but she’d never had to worry about holding back or keeping herself in check; certainly, she’d never thought twice about using the crown sutra when needed to rein in his worst impulses. The Scholar had impressed that on her very well, even back when neither of them ever expected she would have to use it: the sutra existed for a reason and while Monkey’s reputation for mischief had been unjustly exaggerated over the intervening centuries, it was certainly not without some foundation.

She had never thought twice about using the sutra before, even when she hated to do it.

But this was very, very different. This younger version of Monkey might share his older self’s ego and his passion for mischief, but there was a world of difference between using the sutra to discipline a god who had lived for well over a thousand years, and using one on a boy who was just behaving like anyone else of his age. Powerful, yes, perhaps even unstoppable, but he was young and he was small, and if it came down to it she didn’t know if she had it in her to punish him that way.

Better, she decided, to leave him to Kaedo, who couldn’t use the sutra even if he wanted to. Better to leave the two boys to each other, peers as they were, and hope that they wouldn’t turn out to be bad influences on each other’s soft spots.

“Please be careful,” she begged them both.

Monkey preened, smirked, then effortlessly hoisted Kaedo up onto his back. His strength was unsurprising but comical: the raw might and power of a god packed into a stringy pre-pubescent body. He and Kaedo were not so very different in size, and what little height Monkey had over his human companion did nothing to mute the humour of watching a young boy balancing another between his shoulders.

“You worry too much,” he said to Tripitaka, almost dislodging his passenger as he spoke.

Kaedo yelped as he nearly fell, then immediately schooled his expression, flashing her a grin, slightly shaky and holding rather more bravado than real confidence. Not that it mattered, at this point: the cloud was already beginning to ascend, and with little chance now for a change of heart, Kaedo — much like Tripitaka, watching helplessly from the ground — would simply have to wear the choice he’d made and hope for the best.

“Just sit tight,” he said, voice wavering in rhythm with the whipping wind. “We’ve got this!”

And then they were gone, and Tripitaka had nothing left to do but pray that he was right.

*


	4. Chapter 4

*

With nothing to do but wait for Kaedo and Monkey to return from their impromptu shopping trip, Tripitaka turned her attention to the other two.

Sandy, tiny and terrified toddler that she was, had disappeared inside the tears and folds of her cloak and clothes, trembling and whimpering noisily. No doubt she imagined herself well hidden in there, and Tripitaka had no intention of shattering that little illusion; if Sandy wanted to hide from the world and cower by herself, all the less headaches for the rest of them. 

Besides, what could she really do for the poor thing, except try to reassure her that she really was safe, that these strangers she was so frightened of were in fact the only family she’d ever have who wouldn’t abandon her?

It wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have with a child barely old enough to to say her own name.

So, instead, she focused on the safer, saner, simpler option: Pigsy, sitting quietly and unobtrusively beside the quivering bundle, watching over the smaller child within but not trying to engage with her.

“Is she okay?” Tripitaka asked him, hopeful and hesitant in equal measure.

Pigsy shrugged. “Scared, I think. And confused. Don’t think she really knows what’s happening.” His expression shifted, not quite suspicion but as close to it as she’d ever seen on any version of him. “Can’t say I’m much clearer on that myself, but... no tears here, at least?”

Tripitaka mustered a wan chuckle, more to put him at ease than out of any real amusement, then said, “It’s complicated.”

“I’ll bet,” he mused.

She was halfway tempted to leave it there, as she had with Monkey, but Pigsy at least seemed capable of holding a conversation without making everything all about himself, so she waited for him to grunt his curiosity and then pressed on.

“You, her, Monkey... you’re not really like this. You’re all much older. Sandy—” She waved a hand, helpless and hopeless, at the whimpering bundle of cloak-and-toddler. “She made a wish. She didn’t mean to, I don’t think, but she... it made you all younger, somehow. But you’re not supposed to be like this, none of you. It’s not... you’re not...”

She trailed off, unsure how to put it all into words, then gave up and simply shook her head. Awkward and clumsy, probably not helpful at all, still Pigsy had the dignity to nod along as if it all made perfect sense.

“Right. Magic stuff, like the other lad said?” This version of him was just as perceptive as his older self, it seemed, and clever as well; whatever little details he’d overheard earlier and pieced together from her shaky explanation, he seemed to take entirely in stride. Without even a trace of panic or mistrust, he settled back on his haunches, hummed thoughtfully to himself, and asked, “So how old are we s’posed to be?”

Tripitaka pondered this. “Over a thousand, from what you’ve told me. Monkey, too, for all that he likes to pretend otherwise. And Sandy...”

Pigsy smiled, nudging the toddler-shaped cloak-pile with his knee. “Guessing a fair bit younger? Going by the looks of her now, at least.”

“A fair bit, yeah,” Tripitaka affirmed with a sigh. “I don’t know how much, exactly; she doesn’t like to talk about herself. But I do know that she was born a good while after—”

She stopped.

It was one thing to talk to Pigsy about his own life and experiences, but another thing entirely to talk about the wretched state of the new world with one who only knew the old, peaceful one. The last thing these kids needed was an impromptu history lesson, and especially when that history — their future — was so dark and cold and brutal.

Difficult enough, she thought, to wrap his head around the fact that he wasn’t actually the carefree child he thought he was; how was she supposed to make him understand that the only world he’d ever known had fallen to the demons five centuries ago? How was she supposed to tell this version of Pigsy that the scared toddler in front of him would spend her whole life hunted and hated and hurt for being a god like him, or that he and Monkey were among only a tiny handful of gods still alive from the old world?

It would be a lot for anyone, falling asleep in a world where gods ruled over everything, only to wake up in one where they were all but extinct. But for a child, even one as mature and well-adjusted as this Pigsy seemed to be...

Tripitaka shook her head, and decided not to finish. She turned her attention instead to Sandy’s cloak, pushing back the fabric until she found the familiar mass of tangled hair, the familiar pale eyes, the familiar fear-lined face.

“Different world, huh?” Pigsy murmured, very quietly.

He really was incredibly observant, Tripitaka thought.

“Yeah,” she said, just as soft. “A very different world.”

Sandy, still mostly hidden in her cloak, was staring up at them with the rabid terror of one about to burst into tears all over again.

“Home,” she whined, the word little more than a hitching hiccup. “Wanna go home!”

Pigsy reached out for her, clearly wanting to offer some kind of comfort, but Sandy ducked back down inside her cloak, hiding and whimpering and refusing to heed him at all.

Just like her older self would have done, Tripitaka thought sadly, and patted Pigsy’s arm in thanks for the effort.

“You _are_ home,” she said to Sandy, though she doubted the toddler would understand. “I know it’s strange and scary. I know you don’t really understand what’s going on, but you have to trust me, Sandy, okay?”

Sandy shook her head, upset and visibly frightened. “No!”

And she scrunched up her face and started to bawl again.

Tripitaka sighed.

She’d have worse than a headache if this kept up, she knew, but she was at a loss for how to deal with a frightened, shrieking child. She’d never had much interaction with small children, even back when she was one, and she had no idea how to calm one down.

More, it wasn’t like Sandy was wrong to be so frightened in the first place; she’d woken up in a place she didn’t recognise, surrounded by strangers who kept shouting at each other and then trying to insist that she was safe with them; even she herself would have been a bit thrown by that.

As if reading her mind, Pigsy murmured, “Can’t really blame the poor thing for being a little freaked out.”

Tripitaka certainly didn’t blame her for that. Indeed, she was more than a little freaked out by the situation herself. But the cries of a small child were excruciatingly painful, to both her heart and her ears, and all she wanted was a few minutes of peace so that she could close her eyes, catch her breath, and convalesce.

“Sandy,” she begged, shameless in her desperation. “Sandy, please stop crying. Just for a little while, okay? For me?”

Unfortunately, in this, it seemed that Sandy’s younger self bore no resemblance at all to the god Tripitaka knew so well: where her Sandy would move the stars if she asked her to, never mind the impossibility of the task, this one seemed not to care at all that she was making her life miserable. No matter how gently Tripitaka spoke to her, no matter how sweetly or urgently she pleaded, Sandy only cried harder, louder, and with more and more distress.

Pigsy had marginally better success with her, but only briefly. He fished the little toy he’d made out of the wreckage of Sandy’s old clothing and dangled it over her head to distract and amuse her. It worked well enough for a couple of seconds, but Sandy was fast and clever, and as soon as she’d snatched the thing out of his hands she was off again, clutching it tight as she wailed and wailed and wailed.

Defeated and now empty-handed too, Pigsy turned apologetically back to Tripitaka. “She’s a quick little thing,” he observed with a small, rueful smile. “And you say she’s going to grow up into a god? Like us?”

“In a few years’ time,” Tripitaka affirmed, nodding sadly. “It doesn’t go over very well with her family.” She chewed her tongue, hating the truth of it, and confessed, “By the time she’s your age, she’ll be all alone.”

Pigsy hummed, cracking his knuckles distractedly as he took that in. His features were set, contemplative but not confused, and he didn’t ask her to elaborate further. Tripitaka couldn’t even begin to imagine how hard it must be for him to picture such a thing, a world where a young god was outcast instead of celebrated; it must have been mind-bending for him, and yet she saw no struggle on his face at all.

Only quiet sorrow, and a depth of understanding that far outstripped his few years.

“No places of sanctuary for baby gods in this different world?” he wondered aloud.

His voice was clear and strong, and he didn’t stumble at all over the word ‘sanctuary’. He seemed surprisingly well-spoken for one so young; Tripitaka idly wondered if he spent most of his time with his head in books, as she herself had at his age. Unexpected, given what she knew of his older and lazier self: her Pigsy, though not entirely opposed to seeking answers in a scroll if the situation called for it, was generally more of a hands-on sort of god, the kind who favoured trial-and-error in his life as much as his cooking.

How much of that was truly him, she wondered now, and how much was just a product of the life he’d lived and the choices that had been made for him?

“It’s not the best world,” she admitted softly. “But we make the most of it. And you... I mean, the you that you grow up into... you’re doing good work, trying to make it better.”

His smile grew tighter at that, twitching a little at the edges. Tripitaka recognised the shift, pride and hope and idealism swiftly tempered by discomfort and self-doubt; she’d worn the same look herself, almost as a second skin, in the weeks and months after she took on the mantle of Tripitaka, a name and identity that were never meant to be hers and the unbearable responsibility that went with them.

She felt, then, so close and connected to this young and self-conscious version of her calm and easy-going friend. She saw so much of herself in this studious and thoughtful boy who was nothing like the gluttonous, self-serving god she knew and loved so well, and she saw in him too a reflection of the girl she once was: in over her head, and much too small for the world she had been thrown into.

It was so overwhelming, so many different threads of connection all at once, that for just moment she wanted to burst into tears.

She didn’t — Sandy had the crying thing covered well enough on her own — but a part of her really, really wanted to.

“Nice thought,” Pigsy said softly. He looked down at the bawling Sandy for a long, sad beat, then back up at Tripitaka. “Thanks for saying.”

He rose to his feet, then, as though the weight of the moment were too much for him, and paced a little while, circling the fire like he was looking for something to do. Restless and uncomfortable, constantly tugging at his oversized clothes to keep them in place, he looked so much smaller than Tripitaka could have imagined any version of Pigsy ever would. As hefty as he was, even as a child, still the remnants of his adult life seemed to swallow him, making him seem a lot more fragile than he likely was.

She was their protector now, she realised queasily. Even Monkey and Kaedo, both cocky and arrogant, both with uniquely impressive skillsets of their own, were still only children; Kaedo, as worldly as anyone she’d ever met but still so young next to her, his voice only just beginning to break, and Monkey, high-voiced and high-spirited, so sure that the heavens and earth had all been made for him to conquer.

Kaedo, at least, knew something of the world around him; like Tripitaka, he had grown up in it, mortal and human and subjugated. But to Pigsy and Monkey, this world was unfathomable, so far beyond the reality they knew that it must surely seem like a horror story made up to scare them: a world ruled by demons, where the once-all-powerful gods were all in hiding and close to extinction? It couldn’t be really really; it was too horrible.

She wondered what Monkey would say if she tried to explain it to him. How would he react to finding out that he was in part responsible for the fall of the gods and of the world? Even as an adult — even as an adult who remembered it — he had trouble dealing with the truth sometimes, and understandably so. But to learn as a child that his future choices would set the whole world on a path to darkness and destruction, that his arrogance would mean death for the gods?

It might keep him in line a bit, she supposed, rather more doubtful than hopeful. Maybe he’d think twice before acting out or misbehaving, if he realised that his actions could have such devastating consequences.

But then, ultimately, it wouldn’t change anything. The young version of Monkey was no more real than the scrawny little toddler hiding and sobbing in Sandy’s cloak, and to pretend otherwise would only lead to sorrow for them all. Tripitaka could no more protect this little Sandy from the awful things she would later go through than she could change that young Monkey’s future choices by making him see now the harm they’d wrought. Whatever else this magic had changed, it could not change what had already come to pass.

Stricken by a sudden a need to connect — to pretend, at least, that connection was possible with these smaller, simpler versions of the gods she knew — Tripitaka took the still-crying Sandy by the arms and carefully eased her upright.

“Come on,” she coaxed, as gently as she could. “You’ve hidden in there long enough. It’s time to get up now, okay?”

Startled by the contact, Sandy’s wailing trailed off into a perplexed hiccupping whimper. She stared up into Tripitaka’s face, then frowned down at her hands, the point of contact with her own skin, brow furrowed with comical confusion.

“Why?” she asked, with the same earnest curiosity Tripitaka saw sometimes in her older self.

After all the tears and screaming, Tripitaka had to admit the puzzlement was somewhat adorable. A little jarring, perhaps, but not nearly so much as the acceptance that came with it, the willingness to be touched even when scared and upset; in that too, it seemed that this little Sandy was not much like the troubled god she knew so well. Her Sandy, though she shared this one’s curiosity, would flinch and pull away from even the kindest, most innocuous touches, avoiding all kinds of contact unless she felt completely and unequivocally safe.

It was such a rare thing for her Sandy to feel that way.

Not so, it seemed, for this younger and louder version.

This little Sandy had just as much reason as her older self to be afraid, and no reason at all to believe that she was safe simply because a peculiar stranger told her she was. But still, even in all her wariness and fear, she did not resist when Tripitaka touched her, and she did not struggle as she disentangled her from the tatters of her older self’s clothes. She fussed and whined, complained as small children did, but that was all.

Tripitaka pulled the cloak carefully around her shoulders, covering and warming her small body as best she could; it was not ideal, but still Sandy did not protest. Nor did she resist when Tripitaka guided her up onto her feet, helping her to stand and stay mostly upright; she wobbled a little as she got her small, bare feet balanced under her, but again seemed content to accept what help Tripitaka provided without any sign of fear.

“Why?” she demanded again when it was done, growing irritable and impatient now because Tripitaka had not answered her the first time. “Why, why, _whyyyy_?”

Tripitaka swallowed the urge to hug the pouting toddler, instead opting to simply pat her on the head and flash an encouraging, hopeful smile.

“Because,” she explained dryly, “your grown-up self doesn’t take good care of her clothes, and all those loose threads are a choking hazard for tiny little troublemakers.”

Sandy looked down at herself, then at the pool of discarded clothing. She frowned again, thoughtful and sort of studious, then announced, decisively, “Stupid self.”

Tripitaka chuckled. “No arguments here, little one.” She patted her head one more time, then stepped back to let the girl find her bearings on her own. “Feeling better?”

“No,” Sandy pouted. “Not better, just stupid.”

Still, for all her grumbling, she didn’t start to cry again, and she made no attempts to run away or climb back into the pile of clothes; she was cranky and upset, yes, and certainly frightened, but for now at least she seemed to have come out on the other side of her panic-induced meltdown.

Good enough.

Still smiling at her, Tripitaka bent to retrieve her toy fish. “Maybe this’ll help,” she said, holding it out like a peace offering. “A friend, remember? To make sure you feel safe?”

Sandy tested the words on her tongue. “Friend,” she mumbled, as though reminding herself of what it meant. Then, quieter but hopeful, “Safe?”

“That’s right,” Tripitaka said, voice thick with how deeply and desperately she meant it. “We’re your friends, Sandy, and we’re going to keep you safe. I promise.”

And slowly, carefully, and with all the gentleness she had in her, she pulled the little girl into a hug.

It both startled her and warmed her that this Sandy, so unaffected by physicality, didn’t flinch at all.

It startled her too, in a decidedly less-than-warm way, just how little there was of her.

Even as a very small child, it seemed, Sandy was a wraithlike wisp of a thing. Thread-thin and bony, the girl was clearly underfed, most likely in the standard way of families with too many mouths and not enough food.

Not for the first time, Tripitaka thought back to the village two days behind them, to the countless hungry children wandering around and how easily they became prey for a similarly hungry demon; she recalled their parents, too, in their threadbare clothes, just as tired and hungry themselves, struggling to keep an eye on so many little ones all at once. Exhaustion and hunger was everywhere in that place, she remembered, and only now did she think about what that meant. So many empty, growling bellies, and too little money to be made from fishing.

Had her Sandy ever eaten a full meal, she wondered. Even before her family abandoned her, even before she was left alone to fend for herself, a child younger even than the pre-adolescent Pigsy and Monkey, even before she learned all the cruelties and hardships of starvation and survival. Even before her so-called family threw her away, even when they were hers and truly loved her, was there ever enough food to go around?

It shone a whole new light, Tripitaka thought bitterly, on the terrible choice they made when her powers began to manifest.

One less mouth to feed, yes? An easy decision, when put like that: to cast out one troubled child, perhaps a demon, so that four or five others may eat.

It made Tripitaka’s heart ache, but it also ignited something powerful in her chest, a new determination that she desperately needed.

A tragedy, those jutting bones, but at least this was a problem she could fix.

She looked down at Sandy, held out a hand, and said, “Would you like a snack?”

*

An excellent suggestion, as it turned out.

Tripitaka had never seen Sandy eat with so much enthusiasm. In all the time they’d been travelling together, she’d only ever eaten sparingly and with a detached, uncomfortable resignation. On a good day, meals were a chore; on a bad day, a struggle and an ordeal. She would look at Pigsy, beaming his delight with a plate in either hand, and marvel aloud at how anyone could relish the labour of eating.

Pigsy, meanwhile, took great and personal offence to the word ‘labour’, and once refused to talk to her for three days until she nudged it back to ‘task’.

To him, fullness was the greatest comfort imaginable; to Sandy, it was an unpleasant heaviness, a weight sitting in her belly, making it harder to run and hide. She felt vulnerable and panicky when she was full, and the sensation was still so new to her after a lifetime of privation that even now it still sometimes made her physically sick. Tripitaka had watched, amused and saddened in equal measure, as the others had tried to instill in her an appreciation of good food, with no success.

This Sandy was nothing like that, and it was a wonderful thing to see.

Small and excitable, having none of her older counterpart’s hard-learned lessons, she ate like it was the most wonderful experience she’d ever known in her life; there was none of her usual effortful misery as she filled her mouth, only a pure and radiant sense of joy.

A few slices of apple, deposited in front of her in a little bowl so that she could feed herself without too much trouble, and Tripitaka had never seen her so unguarded in her happiness.

She hadn’t thought such a thing was even possible: a Sandy who relished things, who enjoyed herself without restraint, without dread or discomfort or anxiety or the fear of suffering.

Watching her like that, Tripitaka took no shame in admitting her eyes got a little misty.

Pigsy, sidling shyly back to her side, looked hopefully at the bowl and asked, in the flat voice of one already anticipating disappointment, “Can I have one?”

It was almost more jarring than Sandy’s delight, to see a hungry Pigsy showing no excitement at all.

Aching deep in her chest, Tripitaka fished out another apple and handed it to him. “Go right ahead.”

He took it with obvious hesitation and turned it over a few times in his hands before daring to take a bite, glancing nervously around himself the whole while, like he was waiting for someone to leap out from the underbrush and smack the thing out of his hands.

Tripitaka had never seen him so uneasy before, and certainly never around food. She’d never seen him give his appetites even a first thought, much less a second; he was hungry, he grabbed something to eat and shoved it into his mouth, and that was the end of it. He was like Monkey, long accustomed to luxury in all things, and never more than at mealtimes.

Pigsy — her Pigsy — loved food like Monkey loved his own reflection, like Sandy loved the voices she alone heard whispering in the waters; to see him like this now, nervous and hesitant, such a stark and violent contrast to Sandy’s gleeful gusto, was deeply, devastatingly disturbing.

It was the wrong way round, she thought, and the delight she’d felt at watching Sandy’s happiness dissolved entirely as she watched Pigsy staring at his apple as though worried that even that meagre morsel was too much.

“You sure it’s okay?” he asked, more than once.

Tripitaka tried to smile, but it was much more difficult now than it had been just a few moments ago.

“Of course,” she said. “Have as much as you like.”

He ducked his head again, self-conscious and clearly very embarrassed, and mumbled, “Thank you.”

She watched, aching all over, as he nibbled uncertainly at the apple, never fully letting go of his nervousness. Each bite was taken with great reluctance, punctuated by another glance over his shoulder or behind his back, and though she could tell a part of him enjoyed the taste he seemed afraid to let it show on his face.

Tripitaka sighed, closed her eyes to try and compose herself, and said, “It’s okay, Pigsy, really.”

He was staring at her when she opened her eyes. Eyes dark, mouth pulled tight at the corners, like he couldn’t figure out whether to be grateful or wounded; his throat convulsed every now and then, like he was trying to swallow down some automatic response — mistrust, possibly, or disbelief — and remind himself that this was not the world he knew, that she was not seeing the same version of him that his peers and family did.

“Sorry,” he sighed after a long, tense beat, then threw the remains of the apple — only half-eaten, Tripitaka noted — into the fire.

Sandy, having seemingly satisfied her own appetites, was studying them both with infantile fascination. She cocked her head to one side, as if trying to put together the pieces of what she was seeing, then prodded Pigsy in the leg and held out her bowl.

“Want more?”

He frowned, tried and failed to muster a smile for her, then waved a dismissive hand. “No thanks, guppy.”

Sandy blinked, repeated the word ‘guppy’ three or four times as though trying to make sense of its meaning, then shrugged to herself, dumped the remaining apple slices out onto the ground, and carefully placed her toy fish in the empty bowl. She fussed over the little thing for a beat or two, as if to make sure it was settled in and comfortable, then held the bowl up again, proudly, for his inspection.

“Guppy,” she repeated. Then, with an unexpected depth of clarity, “Home!”

Pigsy shook his head, chuckling in spite of himself. “He sure is,” he agreed.

Sandy’s face darkened for a moment, anger rippling dangerously behind her eyes. “ _She_ ,” she informed him, with grave importance.

“Right, right. Sorry.”

He turned away, then, with the pained look of someone who couldn’t bear another moment of her blithe cheerfulness. Tripitaka couldn’t really blame him for that, especially once Sandy took to chanting “sorry!” over and over again in a warbling, squeaky imitation of his voice. It was entertaining, to be sure, but Tripitaka’s amusement faded swiftly when she saw Pigsy’s expression, the tightness of his jaw, the weariness in his eyes.

Pausing only briefly to check that Sandy was able to look after herself, and well out of reach of any sharp or dangerous objects, she slipped surreptitiously into step beside Pigsy and asked, very quietly, “Are you okay?”

He looked her over for a beat, then shrugged and started to pace once again. Unlike his older self, lazy to the bone and proud of it, this version of Pigsy seemed unable to stand still when he was agitated. Even as clumsy as he was right now, in clothes fifteen hundred years too big for him, he preferred to stay in motion than stay in one place; he tripped and he fought for his balance, he fell over more than once, but still he seemed to prefer it that way, always moving his body as if trying to outrun his mind.

They circled the camp maybe three times before he answered, and even then it was with obvious reluctance. Eyes on the ground, under the pretence of holding his trousers up, he bit down on his lip and said, “Just peachy, yeah.”

Tripitaka placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay to eat if you’re hungry,” she told him. “We’ve got plenty to spare.”

That part wasn’t exactly true — their supplies were sparse enough already, and that was without the added headache of figuring out which foods a sensitive, underfed toddler would be able to digest — but Pigsy was uncomfortable enough already without that burden on top. He may be older than Sandy, may be cleverer and more mature than Monkey, but he was a kid too, and Tripitaka was just as much responsible for his well-being as she was for theirs.

She wasn’t even really sure if he believed her anyway; he really was an incredibly perceptive young lad. But he seemed to appreciate the gesture even so; he mustered a wan smile and admitted, “Not used to that.”

Tripitaka frowned. “Not used to having enough to spare?” she asked, thinking again of Sandy, skinny and hungry even as an infant. Then, remembering their vastly different responses to being offered food, her frown deepened. “Or not used to it being okay to, um...”

“Yeah.” Voice tight, shoulders locking, he didn’t let her finish. “Yeah.”

Tripitaka swallowed hard. It wasn’t really unexpected, but it still hurt.

She’d always simply taken for granted that Pigsy’s gleeful appetites reflected a kind of casual self-confidence, that he knew who and what he was, and was content in his body and skin; Monkey gave him a hard time sometimes about his bulk, but Tripitaka had only ever seen him respond with a quip or a riposte of his own. If the teasing bothered him on more than the most superficial level, he’d certainly never let it show.

This Pigsy, born and raised in a world where gods had the whole world at their feet, where they were free to be as lazy or as gluttonous as they liked, was vividly uncomfortable with every inch of his own body. He was shy and self-conscious, and seemed deeply ashamed of even the simplest, most unassuming parts of himself; he barely met Tripitaka’s eye when he spoke to her, he couldn’t hold himself still, he could barely smile and seemed not to enjoy anything. It made her heart sore.

“It’s not like that here,” she said, even though neither of them had voiced any of those things aloud. “You... I mean, the you that you grow up into...”

Pigsy groaned. “This is confusing.”

Tripitaka, floundering more than a little, chuckled her agreement. “The version of you that I know,” she clarified, hopefully more helpfully. “He lived in abundance. Every meal was a banquet, and he thrived with it.”

Pigsy stopped pacing, turned to study her with narrowed, assessing eyes. Untrusting, but not for the reasons Tripitaka assumed.

“Doesn’t sound much like the world you said she lived in,” he remarked, tilting his head back at the finally-quiet Sandy. “Bad for her, you said. But good for me?”

Tripitaka winced. Were all pre-adolescents this annoyingly clever, she wondered, or was she just that terrible at dealing with them?

Either way, the damage was done: there was no clean way out of the conversation now, no more than there would have been if Monkey had asked her directly about his own future. Their choices, the two of them, would inflict pain and misery on countless others, all for their own selfish gains — Monkey with his ego and pride, Pigsy with his taste for comfort and luxury — and it would be centuries before either of them would grow up enough to regret it.

This version of Pigsy was so much more mature, she thought, than the spineless, soulless god she’d met in Palawa, warming a demon’s bed and freely turning his fellow gods into lobotomised vegetables.

How did he get to there from here, she wondered sadly. The fall of the gods had stolen so much from the world; it was an unexpected blow to realise how much it had taken from its survivors as well.

“It’s complicated,” she told him again, quietly. An understatement, to be sure, and one she was getting tired of using. “But pretty much, yeah: this world was better for you than it was for her. You...” She swallowed hard, then took the coward’s way out and waved the details aside. “You lived well; let’s leave it at that. And it took a lot of courage and strength for you to give up the life and luxuries you had, and join the rest of us on our quest.”

Pigsy thinned his lips, pondering. As studious as he had been up until this point, Tripitaka expected him to be curious about the quest, to interrogate her about its purpose and his place on it, lit up and bright-eyed in the ways of imaginative children when thinking about quests and adventure, but he seemed to have dismissed that word as soon as he heard it.

“Luxuries,” he hummed instead, as though the word was a strange, unfamiliar concept. “Don’t really see much of those where I come from. And even if we did...”

He looked down at himself, flushing with shame.

Tripitaka swallowed again, uncomfortable and anxious all over again. Hesitant, and feeling nearly as upset as he looked, she gave voice to the question she really didn’t want answered:

“They don’t let you enjoy yourself?”

Pigsy stopped pacing for a moment, gazing mournfully into the dying fire, at the wasted remains of his apple. Regret, Tripitaka thought, and perhaps a little lingering guilt.

“Not for a good while now,” he said after a beat. He didn’t turn away, seeming to draw the strength to keep speaking from the remains of the campfire. “Not since... well, you know.”

He waved a hand, still not looking up, to take in his broad form.

Tripitaka studied him closely: his size in all directions, the poor fit of his older self’s clothes, the stooped, shy way he held himself. It took her a moment to realise he wasn’t talking about his body at all, but the hidden power thrumming beneath the surface.

“Since you came into your powers,” she realised in a whisper.

The shame deepened, colouring his face, and bringing with it a fresh layer of pain. “S’not a good look for a proper god,” he said softly. “So they tell me, anyhow. Big lad, soft and weak and lazy, not good for nothing but the army.” There was no bitterness in the words, only resignation and the echo of others’ derision; it made them hurt all the more deeply, that the poor boy seemed to have convinced himself they were all true. “They want me to be tough, strong. Want me to make them proud. Make something of myself, you know?”

Tripitaka knew little of Pigsy’s past, but she knew enough of his present to say, without hesitation, “You do.”

It was only after she’d said it and saw the shadows gathering in his eyes, that she realised she shouldn’t have.

He was just a child, a boy. Kaedo might already wandering the world at the same age, but that didn’t make it right. It shouldn’t matter whether Pigsy made something of himself or not; that should never have been the point.

Not that it made any difference: Pigsy was not comforted at all by her words, nor by the comforting hand she laid on his broad shoulder. He looked down at the point of contact, then up at her face, and he didn’t even try to smile.

Again, she was reminded of how much he was unlike the Pigsy she knew. Her Pigsy, who could find a smile for any situation, even the most dire, who only ever stopped smiling in the rare moments when he was afraid.

This Pigsy seemed afraid of everything, and of nothing more than letting his fear be seen. He was nervous and uneasy, twitchy and edgy, and he could not stand still.

It worried her, made her feel helpless all over again, knowing that there was nothing she could do about this, no way of making easier the bad turns his life would take.

The turns it had already taken, so many centuries ago.

Centuries before she or Sandy were born, he had lived through this. Centuries before the only world they’d ever know, he lived in one with heavy expectations on a young god, with so much pressure to do justice to the title, to be good and strong and worthy, to be more than what he was. The boy beside her had an eternity of adulthood ahead of him, stretched out further than her weak human eyes could ever see; she could not fathom why his peers and seniors would want to age him before his time.

Was this what happened with all gods, she wondered. Monkey had certainly never shown any shame in holding fast to his immaturity. But then, perhaps that was just him, arrogant as he was, or perhaps this was just Pigsy, oversized and undervalued, as he had been his whole life.

She supposed it didn’t really matter either way. Just as it didn’t matter to this downtrodden young boy that he would, one day, grow up to make something of himself.

What mattered, the only thing that did, was what she told him now:

“You’re just a kid.”

He looked back at her, eyes wide with confusion and disbelief, like he was seeing for the first time just how different this world was from the one he knew.

“I’m a _god_ ,” he countered, soft but heated. “That means stuff, you know? It means protecting people, being brave and strong. It means being _important_...”

The look on his face made it painfully apparent that he didn’t believe himself capable of any of those things.

Again, Tripitaka wanted to reach out and reassure him, to paint a picture of the Pigsy she knew, the huge god with the huge heart, who wore his appetites and his size like badges of honour and pride, who fought back-to-back and side-by-side with the Monkey King and never once questioned whether he was worthy. Pigsy, the ex-soldier and hero, the god living in a world of demons, who had made bad choices and then owned them, who lived now to better himself, not because it was expected of him, not because he was told to, but because it was the path he had chosen for himself.

She wanted him to see all of his potential, all of the power inside of him. 

But it seemed he already had enough people demanding that from him.

So, instead, she reminded him, “You’ve got a whole eternity to be a god.”

He shook his head. “I wish I wasn’t one,” he whispered, bitterness darkening his face, twisting his features into something terrible. “I’d rather be mortal and happy than never good enough. I wish I was human, like you and that other lad. I wish—”

“Don’t.” The word came out much more sharply than she intended. “Wishing got us into this mess in the first place, remember? Let’s not tempt the fates with more.”

Pigsy’s face fell, like the sharpness of her tone was a physical blow. Tripitaka watched, aching all over again, as the self-consciousness flooded back, as he turned his gaze back to the ground, to his oversized boots and the churned-up earth beneath, as he retreated back inside himself and tucked his heart away.

“Sorry.”

And that was the end of it, so far as he was concerned.

Hiding, in the uniquely painful way of a child who had learned too early the meaning of consequences, someone young and already too much acquainted with the keen lash of disapproval; Tripitaka could see no marks of injury on him, but she could see the phantoms in his eyes clearly enough, the fear of reprisal, the sensitivity to criticism and insult, to being told — as, it seemed, he so often was — that he wasn’t good enough.

Tripitaka didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know if there was anything she could or should say. This version of Pigsy did not belong in this world; there was nothing she could do or say that would free him from the one he knew, or the hold it had over him.

In any case, he didn’t seem particularly inclined to talk any more, or to listen to anything else she had to say on the subject. Shoulders hunched, back bowed as he held his older self’s clothes in place, he shuffled away, retreating to the opposite side of the camp and sitting down all by himself. Quiet, not causing trouble; she could see that he was trying to take up as little space as his large frame would allow, clearly already well accustomed to making himself disappear.

Watching him sitting there, hiding but not hidden, Tripitaka was reminded of Sandy. Not the hapless little toddler, confused and scared and with good reason, but the god she would grow up into, the one who hid all of herself all of the time, hiding for survival, hiding and hiding and hiding because it was the only thing she knew how to do.

She’d never seen much similarity between the two of them before now — Pigsy who lived in luxury and abundance with everything his heart desired, and Sandy who lived in the dark and the damp and the cold with nothing at all — but his younger self looked so much like her older one, swallowing fear, keeping to himself, always moving and always hiding, that she wondered how she’d never noticed it before.

Though she yearned to try and make it better, Tripitaka let the subject drop. Experience with adult Sandy had taught her when to push in moments like this, and when to step back and offer freedom and space. Pigsy was unsettled, he was out of his element, and he had just poured out his vulnerabilities to a total stranger; was it any wonder that he wanted to retreat now?

Still, because she was supposed to be his guardian, at least in theory, she couldn’t let him go without at least trying to impress on him the most important, critical thing:

“You’re safe here.”

Soft, like she said it to Sandy before, but fervent too, because he was older and better able to understand what the word really meant. 

He looked up at her, one eyebrow raised. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Again, even more fiercely. “No judgement with us, okay? No reprisal, no punishment, no nothing. You’re safe.”

She stopped short of saying the other thing, the even-more-important, even-more-true thing: _this is your home, we’re your family_. She stopped, and didn’t say it, because he was more like Sandy right now than Sandy was, because he was skittish and nervous and easily spooked, because he had already a home and — she assumed — a family that he remembered and knew well, because maybe those words, _home_ and _family_ , did not mean the hopeful things to this version of him that they one day would to his older self.

So she left it there — soft and simple: _safe_ — and hoped that would feed the parts of him he was too ashamed to feed himself.

*


	5. Chapter 5

*

An hour later, more or less, Monkey’s cloud descended from the heavens, weighed down with small boys and not-so-small supplies.

“Mission accomplished!” Monkey announced, already gloating and showing off before his feet had even touched the ground.

With good reason, so it seemed. Whatever other successes or failures he and Kaedo may have met with in their travels, they had at least managed to secure him a new outfit. Gone was the ill-fitting attire of a much older Monkey King, folded and stashed away among their things, and in its place he wore an ensemble far better suited for a boy of his age: supple tanned leather, somewhat lighter than Kaedo’s survivalist gear and clearly designed for freedom of movement.

A good choice, Tripitaka had to admit, for one about to spend nights and days in the middle of nowhere.

It was a strange contrast, the parts of him that were familiar and the parts that weren’t; his new clothing threw that strangeness into bold and inescapable relief, a canyon opening up between the Monkey that Tripitaka knew — cocksure, at home in his body and his powers, clad in the crimson-and-black of the Jade Mountain guard — and this younger version of him, a boy in light leather, standing with his feet just a little bit too far apart.

The smile was the same, and so was the mischief glittering in his dark eyes. The crown framing his features, the dark hair pulled up in a messy knot atop his head, and the hairpin-sized staff holding it in place. All these things the same, all of them unmistakeably Monkey.

The rest, however...

Pride, so much of it that she marvelled he didn’t stumble under its weight. A far cry from the comfortable confidence she saw in his older self, secure in his invulnerability, this Monkey’s pride held the slightly tremulous note of untested youth; just as every other version of Monkey seemed to do, he believed himself indestructible, but with none of the older Monkey’s age and experience to prove it was so, no trials or tribulations or training, he had nothing to stand on but his own vapour-thin bravado.

There was no trace of vulnerability in him, even now; he wore the confidence of one who knew no living threat could harm him, but the set of his jaw made it clear that he was still at a point in his life where the need to prove himself was ever present, a shadow looming over his shoulder or a challenge ready to swoop in at the first sign of weakness. It said a lot about the other, subtler shades of pride he would go on to wear later in life, she thought, and the rigours of learning that would define their colours.

All of these observations she wisely kept to herself. For all their myriad differences, this Monkey was still close enough to his other self that she knew it would be a waste of time to even try and teach him humility: he would yawn, roll his eyes, and change the subject before she’d even gotten two words out. In this, she was certain, he would never change.

So, instead, she focused on the more immediate issue: namely, looking him up and down, shaking her head at his strutting and preening, then pointedly turning her attention to Kaedo.

“What did you get?”

Plenty, as it went.

Enough clothing to keep a small family warm through a whole winter. Enough food for two — families and winters both — with enough left over that Tripitaka began to wonder if perhaps it had been a bad idea to let two boys with apparent impulse-control issues fly off with all their money.

“Don’t worry about it,” Kaedo said breezily, watching her face fall and guessing well at the reason. “Almost all that stuff was donated.” Off her no-less-concerned frown, he clarified, “You know, in thanks for rescuing their kids from demons and whatever.”

Monkey smirked his affirmation. “It was the _least_ they could do,” he quoted, “for the ‘Great Sage Equal of Heaven’.” He snickered, evidently more amused than flattered. “Humans are so stupid and easy to impress. Probably could’ve talked them into giving us way more if I’d wanted.”

It spoke well, Tripitaka supposed, that he’d refrained from doing so.

The Monkey she knew would have had no qualms at all in taking anything and everything he could, whether or not the generous souls could afford to give so much away in the first place. It was interesting, and somewhat unexpected, that his younger self was the one who could fathom the concept of moderation, where his full-grown self could not.

She didn’t dwell on that, though. She couldn’t afford to, not when there was a bigger, potentially more serious issue lurking beneath those villagers’ generosity.

“They recognised you, then?” she asked, trying to keep the worry from touching her voice. “The people who ‘donated’ all that stuff? They knew who you were?”

Kaedo, realising exactly what she was asking, made a disgruntled face. “Because he wouldn’t stop saying his own name,” he said with a deep, bone-weary sigh. “And telling the whole story over and over again to anyone who’d listen.”

“It got us free stuff, didn’t it?” Monkey’s defensiveness was as predictable as it was unhelpful. He bristled, glowered at Tripitaka, and waved an impatient hand at the pile of loot at his feet. “You probably don’t know, since you’re just a pointless stupid human and all, but I’m kind of legendary.”

“Believe me,” Tripitaka said dryly, “I know.”

She looked to Kaedo, the unspoken accusation drawing her mouth into a thin, tight line: _why would you let him do something so reckless and dangerous?_

He shrugged his reply, not really looking at her and definitely not looking at Monkey. “You know how he gets,” he muttered sourly. “Couldn’t very well stop him.”

“Of course you couldn’t.” Massaging her temples for what felt like the hundredth time in the last ten minutes, she reminded herself — again — that it would not be appropriate to use the crown sutra on a child. “Did anyone else see? Anyone not of the village?”

“Dunno.” Another shrug from Kaedo, this one rather more contrite. “If they didn’t, they’ll probably hear about it soon enough, though. The rivertowns lost their protector, remember? With Lady Tsumori gone, it’s open season for demons there now. Won’t be too long before someone opens their mouth.”

Tripitaka sucked in an involuntary breath. She hadn’t considered that part: that freeing the villages from Lady Tsumori’s rule would make them prey for other demons, or warlords or bandits or any other number of shady characters, that her demise had opened up a whole swathe of unclaimed land and unclaimed souls.

Perhaps they should go back, after all.

Perhaps they should—

“Relax,” Monkey said haughtily. “No-one’s gonna open their mouths. I told them to keep it quiet, didn’t I?” This to Kaedo, then he whirled accusingly to Tripitaka and demanded, “Why wouldn’t they listen to me?”

There were a great many possible answers to that.

 _Because you’re only a boy,_ for a start. _Because gold talks in a town full of hungry kids, because threats talk louder, because there are just as many dangerous people out there who want you dead as there are generous strangers who want to give you free stuff. Because..._

Too many. Too many answers, and how could she even begin to make him understand any of them?

Monkey had no idea of the differences between the world he knew and the one he’d woken up in. He still believed that gods — and himself more than any other — were worshipped and lauded and obeyed without question.

Judging by the supplies at his feet, the flood of grateful villagers must surely have reinforced that delusion.

No way around it: she would need to talk to him about it. Explain to him, as she’d already tried to explain to Pigsy, that he couldn’t simply run around assuming this world would bend and bow to him as readily as the one he knew. Make him understand, if she could, that he was in danger here, that demons vastly outnumbered gods in this new world, that he, in particular, had a target painted on his back.

Later, she decided.

When he and Kaedo had recovered from their excursion, when all three of the young gods were clothed and content, and when she was able to open her mouth without the fear of another headache.

For now...

For now, she had a stack of loot nearly as tall as the Monkey King to rifle through.

Grudgingly, she had to admit that the fruits of their efforts were probably worth the inevitable exposure. No matter how long their transformations lasted, there was no fear now of any of the newly-youthful gods going cold or clothesless: with only his best guesses to base his judgement, Monkey had nonetheless figured pretty well for the sizes of his companions, and given them plenty of options to choose and dress themselves.

Pigsy, being naturally more pragmatic than his leather-loving peers, opted for simple cotton for his tunic and trousers and a warm fur-lined jacket to cover his broad shoulders; a fine choice, practical and comfortable, but he clenched his jaw when Tripitaka told him he wore it well, and refused to meet her eye.

Sandy, meanwhile, seemed mostly content to let Tripitaka pick out her clothes for her: soft wools and woven fabrics with a pair of sturdy, comfortable looking shoes, the whole ensemble being in the familiar blacks and greys that her older self preferred. A typical toddler, she insisted on trying to dress herself, then fussed and whined when Tripitaka tried to help her navigate the harder parts.

Monkey, watching the whole process with unhidden curiosity, took advantage of a momentary lull in the action to lean in and prod her forehead with the tip of his staff.

Sandy, being less tolerant than her older self of his shenanigans, smacked the staff away, then grabbed one of her new shoes and hurled it full-force at his face.

“Good aim,” Tripitaka observed with a smile. Then, remembering that she was supposed to be the adult and the responsible one, she cleared her throat and hastily added, “I mean, uh, no hitting! Play nicely, now, both of you.”

Monkey snickered. “Just testing its reflexes.” He reached out, as if to poke her again, then thought better of it and handed the shoe back instead. “Is the little pest even housebroken or whatever?”

Having spectacularly failed to give that particular subject any thought, Tripitaka deferred to Pigsy, who shrugged and nodded without ever looking up from his new, better-fitting boots.

“Kid’s got better motor control than you,” he mumbled in Monkey’s general direction. “She’ll be just fine.”

“Just fine,” Sandy echoed seriously, and smacked Monkey with the shoe again.

Tripitaka sighed, confiscating the shoe before an all-out war could break out. “No hitting, Sandy.”

Monkey, being rather more wounded in his pride than his face, snatched up a fistful of dirt and grass and dumped it spitefully over Sandy’s head.

“I don’t like it,” he declared. “It’s tiny and stupid and it keeps throwing stuff at me.”

“In all fairness,” Pigsy pointed out dryly, “you do kind of keep asking for it.”

Tripitaka, now occupied with removing clumps of grass from Sandy’s impossibly untameable hair, privately agreed.

Unsurprisingly, Monkey took the lack of defence as a cue to take his leave. He stomped noisily back to his pile of ill-gotten freebies and rifled through their food stocks in search of a snack.

Tripitaka let him go, wordlessly shaking her head; so long as he wasn’t hopping back up onto his cloud and flying off in a sulk, she was content to let him more or less do whatever he liked.

Besides, they had other problems to deal with.

As Kaedo was typically pleased to remind her.

He strutted over, exchanging a few playful blows with Monkey as they passed each other, then sat himself down at Tripitaka’s side and handed her a couple of apples.

“Eat,” he urged, sounding more like a parent than one of the children she was running herself ragged trying to protect. “This whole thing falls apart without you, so maybe don’t go passing out from lack of nourishment?”

Tripitaka chuckled, ruffled his hair, and took a large bite, unashamed to let him see just how grateful she was.

“One crisis averted,” she mused between mouthfuls. “Now what?”

“Now,” he replied, making himself comfortable, “we make a plan.”

 _Ah, yes_ , Tripitaka thought, feeling her appetite swiftly starting to fade, _the easy part_.

*

It was, in truth, easier enough once they put their heads together.

Though he was only a little older than the newly-youthful Pigsy and Monkey, Kaedo had a remarkable head on his shoulders, and a good mind for detail; he was clearly well accustomed to rolling with unexpected punches, and while Tripitaka would have vastly preferred a companion with less cheekiness and a deeper voice, she couldn’t deny that he knew how to keep his cool in a crisis.

Simpler for him, perhaps, than for herself, because he had no personal attachment to any of the gods. He hadn’t spent the best part of a year questing and journeying with them, he hadn’t put his life in their hands, he hadn’t sat by, mortal and helpless, and watched them fight and hurt, sleep and sicken and struggle through the tribulations the quest and the world threw at them. They weren’t his friends like they were hers; they were only annoyances, and he had made no secret of the fact that he didn’t trust any of them.

Easy for him to be cool, then, when faced with a curveball like this.

Not so much for Tripitaka, who was still quietly panicking about it.

He had been right in the village, she realised now, and she had been right to worry. As unexpected as this particular situation was, all kinds of trouble were inevitable on a quest like theirs; she should have anticipated it, or at least something like it, and been better prepared. Instead, she was here, thrown upside-down and wholly unable to deal with the helplessness that had fallen over her. To no longer be able to depend on her gods to protect her was difficult enough, but to suddenly find herself having to protect them instead?

Yes, Kaedo was right: she should have anticipated this. She should have made herself ready, no matter how confidently Monkey had insisted he was unbeatable, no matter how devotedly Sandy swore herself to her side, no matter how big or strong or reliable Pigsy was, no matter how talented they all were in their own ways. Too many times, one or all of them had jumped in at the last moment to save her; she had grown comfortable and complacent, and she was paying dearly for it now.

Just like Kaedo warned her about, back at the village.

Little wonder he was looking so pleased with himself.

She didn’t tell him any of this, and she certainly didn’t tell him that he was right. He didn’t need any more fuel for gloating, and in any case they both had more important things to worry about. Let him chide her for not being ready for this when they weren’t stuck in the middle of it; she would gladly accept his smugness then, if it meant that her gods were back to their old — older — selves, would gladly allow him to train her with the fangkris until her arms fell off, if it came with Monkey offering his unsolicited advice, or with the smell of Pigsy’s cooking, or with Sandy, quiet and dry-eyed and herself.

Her gods, her friends. And now she, helpless and human, had to step up and protect them all from themselves.

And, potentially, from any other threats lurking out there.

She breathed deeply, swallowed her panic until it sat acid-sharp in her stomach, and let Kaedo make the plans.

“First,” he said with authority, “you need to dump that soil.”

This he punctuated by pointing, not for the first time, at Pigsy’s plant. Sitting by his bedroll, almost entirely forgotten yet again, Tripitaka recalled now that he’d made this same point earlier. The soil, taken from the grove he was so sure had caused this trouble in the first place, seemingly harmless but how could they know for sure? She’d thought the same thing of the grove itself, hadn’t she?

One more thing Kaedo was surely right about; there were no words to express how much she hated that.

“Fine.” She didn’t bother trying to mask her sigh. “Then what?”

“Then we find a place to lay low,” he said, rolling his eyes as if it were obvious, as if she really should have reached this conclusion by herself, without his help. “Don’t want them to be sitting targets when the demons figure out what’s happened and show up to take advantage.”

 _When_ , he said. Not _if_.

It was, unfortunately, a good point. A necessary one, and one she would surely have thought of it herself, if she wasn’t preoccupied with glancing over her shoulder every few seconds and checking on the kids, making sure Monkey hadn’t decided to fly off again, making sure Sandy was staying still and out of trouble, making sure Pigsy hadn’t fallen too deep inside his own melancholy.

Helpless, all three of them, and with only her and Kaedo to keep them safe.

She didn’t let herself dwell on that. Couldn’t, if she didn’t want to give in to the despair. She didn’t let herself think of the fangkris hanging heavy at her hip, or of Sandy’s belt-knife sheathed beside it. She didn’t let herself wonder if she would be able to do what was necessary if — _when_ — the demons did show up, if she had what it took to wield one or both of those weapons against a real enemy, even if it meant defending three helpless kids.

She definitely didn’t let herself think of the village, of the cage full of children, of herself and Kaedo, side by side inside, fighting off a hoard of angry villagers, frightened parents desperate for someone to blame for their misfortune. She didn’t let herself recall her own feelings, the anger and betrayal bubbling up inside her chest, wounded and upset because she needed them — her gods — and not one of them was there.

Because, again, Kaedo was right.

She didn’t let herself think of the dread, the horror, the panic. She didn’t let herself think—

She didn’t let herself think.

She swallowed thickly, let her fingertips rest of the hilt of the fangkris, and said, “All right.”

Characteristically and rather unnervingly perceptive, Kaedo narrowed his eyes. “You good?”

“Yeah.” A lie, offered without thought and without hesitation. For all his streetwise worldliness, Kaedo was just a boy too, barely older than Monkey and Pigsy, and Tripitaka would no more burden him with her self-doubt than she would burden either of them. “I’ll deal with the soil. You scout around the forest, see if you can find somewhere more sheltered for us to hide out until they’re back to normal.”

Kaedo’s snicker was painfully strained. “If that ever happens.”

“It will,” Tripitaka insisted, speaking with a faith she only wished she actually felt. “Take Pigsy. He’s quiet and strong, shouldn’t cause any trouble, and I think he’d be grateful for a chance to help out. I’ll bring Monkey.”

 _Because he will definitely cause trouble_ , she didn’t need to add.

“Right, that’ll be fun for you.” He sobered. “What about, uh...”

And he cocked his head at Sandy, playing by herself with her little toy fish and thoroughly oblivious to the serious conversations taking place nearby.

Tripitaka sighed.

She expected it to be an ordeal, asking Sandy who she wanted to go with, and it surely was. Tripitaka might have taken the decision out of her hands and simply insisted on keeping an eye on the child herself, but the selfish, not-at-all-nurturing part of her was secretly hoping she’d choose to go with Pigsy, who had gifted her the toy she loved so well, and thus provide her with a much-needed, guilt-free respite from the tears and tantrums.

That did not happen.

Instead, Sandy looked up at her with salt-stung eyes, pondered the question for approximately three seconds, and said, “Want to go _home_.”

Of course she did.

Tripitaka, being in no mood to try and explain the long-term magical consequences of ill-advised wishes to a scared toddler, went with the simpler option: shameless lying.

“You’ll go home soon,” she promised, hoping she’d prove a more convincing liar to an infant audience than she had to her fully grown friends. “But for now, I’m afraid—”

“No!”

The outburst was unsurprising, if also rather unpleasant, and carried with it the nerve-rending threat of more tears. Tripitaka tried to tell herself that it was understandable, that Sandy was in a strange place and too young to understand why or how she’d gotten here, that she was small and scared and the world was big and scary, that she, unlike her companions, had retained nothing of her powers, that she was vulnerable and helpless, and who wouldn’t be crying endlessly when faced with all that?

All true. But not especially helpful when faced with another round of ear-splitting shrieks.

“You know,” Tripitaka sighed, as Sandy descended into another round of whimpering and then, inevitably, wailing. “When you grow up you never cry at all. You’re polite and sweet and _very_ quiet.”

Sandy stopped crying just long enough to shoot her a comically incredulous look, then promptly started up again.

“Yeah, _no_.” This from Monkey, striding over to them with a pained but somewhat determined look on his face. “We’re not doing this again.”

So saying, he grabbed the bawling toddler and hoisted her up onto his shoulders.

Sandy, startled momentarily out of her tantrum, grabbed a fistful of his hair. “No!”

“Yeah, yeah. ‘No, no, no, wah, wah, wah’. Heard you the first time.” He rolled his eyes at Tripitaka, flexed his arms just like his older self would have done, and muttered, “Quit your whining, you little brat: you’re coming with us.”

And that, it seemed, was that: decision made, whether they liked it or not.

As quick to tears as she was, Sandy seemed intelligent enough to know not to test Monkey’s patience. She quieted down, fussing only a little bit as he shifted to make her more comfortable, and held on for dear life.

It was a strange, warming sight, Tripitaka thought. For all his hidden strength, Monkey still wore the body of a child, entirely lacking the muscle and power so evident in his adult self. He was slim and unassuming, awkwardly built in the usual way of young boys whose bodies were still growing, and showing no visible evidence of the power and grace he carried within; he looked like the pre-pubescent boy he was, wholly lacking in any strength to define him, and, as with Kaedo on the cloud, it was rather jarring to watch him carrying a smaller child so effortlessly on his shoulders.

A god’s power, Tripitaka knew, turned for once to almost-noble purposes. Still, it was rather like watching an ant balancing a particularly large object on its back, the size of the burden seemingly at odds with the size of the one carrying it.

A pointed reminder, she supposed, that Monkey was still Monkey after all, and even though he looked mostly unassuming and relatively short, he still carried within him enough power to break and then rewrite the entire world on a whim.

Firm, but with surprising gentleness, he removed Sandy’s hands from his hair and placed them on his shoulders. 

“Not the hair,” he told her, in a voice that threatened terrible reprisal if she failed to heed him. “ _Never_ the hair.”

Tripitaka couldn’t help herself: she laughed.

After so much tension, so much worry and fear and panic, after so long with tight shoulders and a sour stomach, it felt more wonderful than she could put into words, to loosen her limbs and loosen her insides, to look at Monkey — so much, in that moment, like the older god she knew so well — and simply laugh.

“All right, then,” she said to Kaedo, relishing the shimmer of mirth in her own voice for the brief moment it lasted. “I guess she’s coming with us.” Then, to Monkey, with as much authority as she could muster, “Please try not to drop her?”

Monkey grinned, cheeky and familiar, a grin that it seemed would not change at all in the next thousand and five hundred years. It made her chest hurt to see it now, and it made her smile a little bit too.

“No promises!” he snickered, then darted off into the brush before she could stop him.

*

Giving as wide a berth as she possibly could to the forest and its hidden groves, Tripitaka took them to the river.

“Clean water gives clean soil, right?” she asked her young companions, with out-of-her-depth hopefulness.

Perhaps if she’d been her older self, Sandy might have had some wisdom to offer on the subject of the water; perhaps if he’d been his, Monkey might have feigned some knowledge of his own, just to make himself look clever. In their present states, however, they weren’t even illusively helpful: Sandy only giggled and cheeped “Water!” about a dozen times, and Monkey shifted her weight on his shoulders, let out a dramatic, purposefully obnoxious yawn, and muttered “Who even cares?”

Neither of which, Tripitaka thought moodily, were any sort of help.

Still, without a better option, she made her choice and got to work.

Monkey, of course, grew bored within seconds. He shrugged Sandy off his back, nudged her towards the river with his boot, and watched with restless amusement as she tripped and wobbled her way to the water’s edge.

“That big guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” he grumbled to himself. “Better motor control than me? Ha!”

Tripitaka, being elbows-deep in fresh soil and thus in no position to counter that particular point, only said, “Don’t let her fall in, okay? I don’t know if her powers would protect her at that age.”

Monkey snorted at that, still clearly unconvinced by the notion that Sandy would indeed grow up to be a god like himself. “Stupid little useless thing,” he muttered bitterly. “I’m not a babysitter.”

“You are now.”

“I’m a _god_ ,” he reminded her, with a haughtiness that made her think back to their first meeting, the day he came out of his rock prison and believed himself to still be the unstoppable force he had been before he went in. “I’m the best and most powerful of all the gods on Jade Mountain. If my Master knew you were wasting my talents babysitting a stupid little human child thing...”

“I’m sure he’d call it an excellent lesson in patience and diligence,” Tripitaka said with a smile, recalling the brief moments she saw of Monkey’s time at Jade Mountain, the aborted memory courtesy of the Shaman’s magic. “From what I know of him, he appreciated the value of those things.”

“Nuh _uh_.” Still, his less-than-subtle pout made it clear he secretly knew she was right. “What he’d _actually_ say is that it’s a waste of my precious and super-important time.”

Still, for all his griping, Tripitaka noted that he hadn’t taken his eyes off Sandy even once. Just like the Monkey she knew, he cared far more than he’d ever admit, even for this small, vulnerable little thing he called a waste of time.

Not that the extra attention was necessary. Sandy was an attentive child, acutely aware of the world around her, and with well-honed instincts to boot; for all her fascination with the water, she seemed content to remain safely on dry land, gazing down at her reflection and chattering nonsensically at it.

Much like her grown-up self, Tripitaka thought with a pang.

Monkey, hovering close by and making a grand show of pretending he wasn’t paying her any attention at all, was predictably unimpressed. “Why can’t it talk properly?” he demanded. “It can do everything else.”

Tripitaka considered the question, balancing it between the labour of digging up soil and tending to the life-saving plant. It was more of a task than it should have been, juggling two children and a conversation along with the work, and it annoyed her that she wasn’t better at it. She thought back to last night, to the crystalline quiet of the grove, the heaviness on the air — magic, she realised now, rather less enthralled — and the simplicity of Sandy’s company.

She missed that Sandy. Confused and troubled, yes, unable to connect to her own feelings, yes, the source of this whole mess, yes... but even so, she missed her terribly.

“She comes from a big family,” she explained to Monkey, keeping her voice soft for the toddler’s sake. “Lots of brothers and sisters, a lot of different voices all at once. She probably just hasn’t found hers yet.”

She had no idea if it was true or not; what little she knew of small children she’d learned from the Scholar and forgotten almost immediately, carelessly cast out of her head to make way for more enjoyable, academic lessons. Never much of a nurturer, she’d naturally assumed she wouldn’t ever have to know such things; how could her younger self possibly have foreseen this?

For all she knew, Sandy’s limited speech could just as easily have been a symptom of her godhood, a fast-developing body and a slow-developing mind; likewise, it could have just been Sandy, who even in her older form spoke sometimes with the stunted lilt of a poorly-educated child. Indeed, for all she knew, it could be perfectly normal for children her age. She really had no idea, and she hadn’t given it much thought; what did it matter, after all, when she already knew the powerful god this monosyllabic little toddler would grow up into?

Whatever the true reason, the one she’d chosen seemed to cause Monkey a great deal of confusion. He was staring at Sandy again, brow furrowed, as though trying to dissect a newly-discovered creature with his eyes.

“What’s that even mean?” he asked.

Tripitaka shrugged. “When you’re part of a big family,” she said again, “sometimes it’s difficult to make yourself heard. Sometimes it takes a while to find your place or find your voice.” She let her gaze soften, falling fondly on the occupied little Sandy, and thought of the devoted-but-terrible poet she would grow up to be. “But she’ll get there.”

Monkey grunted, clearly no more enlightened now than he was before.

“Sounds stupid.” He mimed quote-marks on the next word, speaking it thickly, like it was a foreign taste on his tongue: “ _Family_. Who’d want some dumb thing like that, anyway?”

The plant jolted in Tripitaka’s hands, a telling twitch that ran the length of her body. She set it down, let it settle beside the freshly-dug soil, and turned all her attention to Monkey.

“Trouble with yours?” she asked carefully.

Monkey looked at her like she’d just suggested something so patently ridiculous it didn’t even warrant a response. Boredom, the familiar irritation he so often wore — in all his forms, at all ages, so it seemed — when he felt himself surrounded by flagrant stupidity. On his adult self it was annoying enough; on this version of him, young and still small enough that his voice hadn’t yet broken, it was borderline insulting.

After a long beat, and just a touch too casually, he muttered, “Don’t have one.”

Tripitaka frowned, trying to piece that together, to reconcile it with what she knew of him, what she’d witnessed in his memories of the Jade Mountain. “What about your Master?”

“He’s not my _family_.” He spat the word out like it was a poison, a heinous insult to whatever relationship they did have. “He’s my _teacher_. Don’t you humans understand nothing?”

Apparently not. Tripitaka opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, then tried different approach. “But you must have had a family once. Did they abandon you? Like...”

She glanced back at Sandy, still cheerily occupied with the water, and had to swallow hard to banish the lump suddenly forming in her throat.

Typically unaware of anything beyond his own radius, Monkey didn’t notice the shift in her attention, nor the flash of sorrow it brought. He was rolling his eyes and his shoulders, stretching out his lean body, clearly trying to make himself look older and more worldly than he was. It didn’t work, of course; as was so often the case with children who yearned to grow up faster than they should, the posturing only made him look younger.

“I was hatched from an _egg_ ,” he announced after a beat, enunciating the last word with great importance. “You don’t get no stupid family when you’re hatched from an egg. Everyone knows that.” He curled his lip, and if Tripitaka wasn’t so intimately acquainted with Monkey’s particular brand of bravado she might not have noticed the faint tremor in his voice, the hint of pain hidden beneath the sneering and the smugness. “Everyone except stupid humans, I guess.”

The insult was unnecessary, but for once Tripitaka didn’t have the heart to chide him.

“I’m sorry,” she said instead, heart aching slightly with how thoroughly she meant it.

He ignored that. Perhaps simply preoccupied like always with his own thoughts, perhaps, like his older self, not wanting to risk acknowledging his own weakness by accepting someone else’s pity.

“Whatever,” he pouted. “Don’t want a dumb stupid family anyway, if all they do is stop you from learning how to talk properly.”

This he punctuated with a sullen, spiteful look at Sandy. It was a pointed look, transparent in all the things it didn’t say: the seething, quiet jealousy that transformed all too neatly into bitterness and feigned resentment.

Watching them both, Tripitaka’s heart ached all the more. It was a raw, ragged kind of ache, tugging at her in two different directions at once: the boy who had never known a mother or father, who had never even imagined having such confidantes as brothers or sisters, who saw the only adult figure in his life as a teacher and nothing more; and the girl, who whined and wailed and cried, who begged and begged and begged to be taken back to a home and a family who would very soon throw her away just for being what she was.

“Don’t be jealous of her,” Tripitaka said to Monkey, very quietly. “The family she has... it doesn’t end well for her.”

If he were anyone else, the point might have landed; certainly it had landed hard with Pigsy. But Monkey was nearly as oblivious to the suffering of others as Kaedo, and so the only part he heard was the part that mattered the least.

“I’m not _jealous_ ,” he growled, voice pitching jaggedly in his efforts to keep it steady. “She’s just a dumb brat who won’t stop crying and can’t even talk properly. Why would I be jealous of that?”

“I don’t know,” Tripitaka said, soft and full of sorrow. “Because you have no reason to be. Believe me.”

As if sensing the heavier tone their conversation had taken, Sandy stumbled her way back to them, wide-eyed and curious, cupping a pool of water from the river in her clumsy hands.

“For you,” she said to Monkey, holding it out like it was her own lifeblood. “Water!”

Unimpressed, Monkey rolled his eyes. “What does she want me to do with that?”

Tripitaka nudged his shoulder, lightly chastening, then flashed Sandy a sympathetic, approving smile. “She’s a god, remember?” she hissed, not taking her eyes off the hopeful toddler and her precious gift. “She may not realise it yet, but when she’s a little bit older, that water will be the source of all her power.”

Apparently that touched on something deeper than her human understanding could reach, because Monkey’s entire face transformed, softening into an unexpected depth of understanding.

“Water powers?” he echoed, brow furrowed in momentary contemplation. Then, rather more to himself than either of his companions, “Go figure.”

Tripitaka didn’t ask him to elaborate. Instead, still chiding but a little gentler now, mirroring the softer look on his face, she said, “Water is very precious to her, Monkey. So if you could please try and be nice about it...”

“Ugh, fine. Whatever.” Though he made a show of sulking and rolling his eyes, he nonetheless did as she said, leaning in and making a spectacle of drinking what little water hadn’t already spilled out of Sandy’s uncoordinated little hands. “Thanks, brat, I guess.”

Apparently ‘you’re welcome’ was a little bit too advanced for the miniature Sandy, because she just nodded sagely and said “Yes,” in a decisive, authoritative tone, then sat herself down at Monkey’s feet, settling in and snuggling up against his boots, like she’d decided the exchange had made them the very best of friends.

Tripitaka made a valiant attempt to smother her smile.

For about half a second.

Then Monkey sighed, rolled his eyes dramatically, and stooped to pat the little toddler on the head, giving in to the uninvited closeness without so much as a word of protest, and Tripitaka stopped trying to hide it at all.

“You’re both adorable,” she said.

Predictably, Monkey only scowled at that. “She’s stupid,” he groused. Then, to Sandy, because apparently he hadn’t finished brooding over this particular issue: “And so is your dumb ‘family’, brat. Stupid and pointless, just like you.”

Sandy pouted right back at him. “Just like _you_ ,” she countered, then immediately went back to cuddling his boot.

The moment being thus well and truly ruined, Tripitaka let the smile fall from her face, replaced by a sigh. “Well, that was a lovely twenty-five seconds.”

Monkey rounded on her. “I’m serious,” he pressed, clearly unwilling to let the matter drop. “It _is_ stupid. And I don’t want one, and I’m not jealous of some stupid crybaby human thing.” He drew himself up to his full height — not nearly as impressive as Pigsy’s, albeit fractionally taller than Kaedo — and went on, sounding exactly like his older self, “I’m gonna be famous, anyway. I’m great and awesome, and the whole world is gonna know my name. _She’ll_ be the one jealous of _me_ , just you wait and see.”

It made Tripitaka ache all over again, knowing just how right he was... and how completely wrong.

Not for the first time, she thought about telling him the truth, sitting him down and explaining it to him as best she could: how this world had come to be, the terrible role he himself had played in the fall of the gods and the rise of the demons, the pain-strewn paths laid out for gods like Sandy, born to a world with no celestial armies and no Jade Mountain, with only human fear and human prejudice and hungry demons looking for prey.

She wondered what he would say, if he learned all that. Would he show some humility? Would he shudder and shake, terrified of the monstrous thing he would one day become? Or would he simply laugh it off and call her a liar?

She didn’t want to know. For her own sake — cowardice, yes, she wasn’t ashamed to admit that — and a little for his as well. She did not want to burden him, this arrogant child, this young boy who was so frustrating and so frustrated, with things neither one of them could change. There was no healing in knowing the future, not when it was someone else’s past.

So instead, she said, very quietly, “Is that all you want out of your life? To be famous?”

“Stupid question. Stupid human.” He leaned back, preening and gloating while still taking great care not to dislodge the clingy toddler from his ankle. “I’m gonna be the biggest, most powerful, most important god the world has ever seen. The Master already says I’m the best and the toughest. When I’m done with my stupid training, everyone on all the seven continents and all the heavens will know who I am.”

Unable to look him in the eye, Tripitaka turned instead to Pigsy’s plant, to the mostly-finished task of giving it fresh soil for the second time in less than a day. She kept her head down, kept her hands occupied, kept her whole body engaged and busy, so that Monkey might not notice the way she was avoiding his gaze, the way she couldn’t bring herself to face him as he bragged and smirked about things he wouldn’t understand for another thousand years.

“Maybe that’s not such a good thing,” she said, touching only the very edges of the tragic truth. “Fame isn’t always a blessing, you know, Monkey. Sometimes people become famous for the wrong reasons. Sometimes they try so hard to get famous they forget about what’s really important. Sometimes—”

“Yeah, right!”

He leaped up to his feet, dislodging Sandy in the process; she whined, gave Monkey’s foot a violent smack — apparently blaming the boot rather than its owner for her upset — and turned away from it in disgust. Monkey, ignoring her, stood over Tripitaka with his arms folded; no doubt he was hoping to intimidate her, expecting that he would tower over her now that he was standing and she still seated.

Alas, being rather shorter of stature than the Monkey she was used to, Tripitaka remained wholly unmoved.

“Sit back down, will you?” she chided. “And you don’t need to shout. I can hear you well enough already.”

Monkey stuck his tongue out. “I wish I was famous already,” he said again, no doubt just to annoy her. “No stupid training, no stupid Master or all those other dumb, stupid gods who think they’re better than me. Just me on my cloud, flying around and being awesome. Everyone would know my name, just like those human losers back in that stinky old village, and they’d all give me free stuff all the time, and it’d be amazing. I wish—”

“Please,” Tripitaka said, massaging her temples and smearing soil all across her forehead. “No more wishing, Monkey, I beg of you.”

“Fine!” And he sat back down, grumbling dramatically to himself. “Stupid humans. No sense of imagination.”

Sandy, reattaching herself to his boot the instant he was seated, giggled loudly and declared, “Stupid humans!”

Monkey burst out laughing.

“You see?” he said to Tripitaka, clearly very pleased with himself. “Even the brat gets it. Good brat!” He patted Sandy on the head, much to her delight, and wheedled, “Now say ‘Monkey King’...”

Tripitaka sighed, buried her face in her hands, and tried in vain to remember a simpler, more peaceful time.

*


	6. Chapter 6

*

By the time they reunited with Kaedo and Pigsy, Monkey had taught Sandy at least half a dozen words that Tripitaka was certain her parents — had they kept her — would disapprove of in the strongest possible terms.

“Those two,” she said to Kaedo, throwing up her hands in surrender, “are not allowed near each other any more.”

Kaedo snickered, amused in the way of one who knew he wouldn’t have to deal with it. “Good luck with that.”

Indeed, even as they spoke, Monkey was already causing trouble with his pint-sized admirer. The moment they’d gotten back to camp, he’d seized upon Sandy’s little fish toy, and was presently in the process of dangling the thing above her head, just out of her small reach, taunting and teasing her with the trademark cruelty — only mostly harmless — of an antagonistic older sibling.

For one who had no family of his own to speak of, Tripitaka thought, Monkey seemed to have had little difficulty finding his place within a new one.

To her infinite relief, she was spared the need to stage an intervention. Before she or Kaedo had even begun to move, Pigsy was already there, making good use of the height he had over his fellow god as he stepped in front of him. He didn’t exactly tower over Monkey, but he was sufficiently bigger that it was no challenge at all for him to snatch the toy out of Monkey’s hands and use the momentum of his larger body to drive the other boy back and away from the whimpering toddler.

“It’s not yours,” he informed him, with unexpected firmness. Then to Sandy, handing the thing back to her with care, “Here you go, guppy. If he gives you trouble again, just holler.”

Monkey glared, but didn’t challenge the larger boy; unlike his adult self, it seemed this young Monkey could tell when the odds of winning a potential fight were not in his favour.

“Whatever,” he groused, slinking sullenly away. “I was totally gonna give it back and all. Just wanted her to ask nicely for it instead of calling me ‘stupid’ again or whatever.”

With the situation now resolved, Pigsy’s shyness swiftly returned; he lowered his head, and when he spoke again it was in a low mumble. “Shouldn’t try to make others treat you nice if you don’t treat them nice first.”

The words held deep meaning for him, Tripitaka could tell, but he spoke them too quietly to carry much weight. Righteous indignation, the kind endemic in one who had been treated poorly by his peers, coupled with the downtrodden self-consciousness of one who had been told all his young life that his words and thoughts were not worth anything. A painful combination to see in anybody, but none worse than children.

Monkey, for all his tendencies for mischief and conflict, did not take up the whispered challenge. Perhaps he too sensed the heavier feelings behind Pigsy’s words, hidden under his hunched shoulders; perhaps he was showing a rare display of empathy to his fellow god. Perhaps, as before, he simply believed he wasn’t likely to win if it came down to a fist-fight between them.

Whatever the reason, the result was the same: he growled, muttered, “I’m nice when people _deserve_ it,” and let the moment, such as it was, end there.

Tripitaka watched them, chewing her lip and trying to figure out whether she should try and play peacekeeper between the two of them or simply let them feel each other out in their own way. Monkey had always taken particular enjoyment in antagonising Pigsy, even when they were both fully grown, but there was a world of difference between two adult gods bickering, both secure in their skins and separate achievements, and a cocksure, overconfident young boy picking on a weaker one.

“Maybe we should just keep them _all_ apart from each other,” she mused out loud, then forced her attention back to Kaedo and the issue more immediately at hand. “Find any good spots for us to hide out?”

Kaedo’s shrug, noncommittal and just a little too tense, was not the optimistic response she was hoping for.

“It’s all forest,” he admitted with a sigh. “A few sort-of hidden places here and there, but nowhere a demon couldn’t find if he was smart or determined enough.” His jaw tightened briefly, then loosened, no doubt for her sake more than his own. “We’ll just have to stay alert, I guess.”

Tripitaka glanced back at the children: Monkey pacing irritably and twirling his hairpin-staff between his fingers, Sandy babbling at her fish, and Pigsy keeping close and keeping a wary, skittish eye on her.

“We?” she echoed, not liking the sound of that.

Kaedo rolled his eyes. “You and me, you goof.” His eyes gleamed, then, and he smirked in that deliberately provocative way he had of trying to get her out of her own head. “That is, if you think you’re tough enough?”

It worked. Tripitaka bristled and glared, but she straightened her spine and set her worries to the side.

“I’m tough enough,” The lie, though necessary, settled unpleasantly behind her ribs, a dull sort of discomfort not unlike indigestion. “Believe it or not, Kaedo, I took care of myself just fine before you and your fangkris came along to patronise me.”

“You mean you let your precious gods take care of you.” Spoken sharply, and without humour. “You know, the same gods who are sulky, useless, pint-sized versions of themselves right now?”

“They’re not that much smaller than you,” she reminded him, feeling her temper grow; if he was trying to antagonise her into showing some backbone, it was certainly working. “And you seem to handle yourself pretty well.”

Besides, she thought belligerently, if Monkey’s bragging was to be believed, he was already in training at Jade Mountain, already mastering his own powers, his own strength, his own reputation. If she could only keep his attitude on a leash, she was sure she’d make a good ally — and, all right, yes, a good protector — out of him.

That was a pretty big ‘if’, though.

Not helped by the way he was strutting and sulking around the camp, the way he would occasionally lash out or kick at a stray pebble or leaf that fell into his path, blithely taking out his boredom and frustration on the world around him. It was not unusual behaviour for a young boy, she supposed, and all the more for one with such high expectations to live up to and so few adult figures to temper the arrogance and ego.

Typical behaviour for a typical young boy, perhaps. But Monkey was not a typical young boy, for all that his behaviour and appearance mirrored one. He was a god... and, by his own admission, an incredibly powerful one.

The wreckage of the world spoke well enough for itself: Monkey’s arrogance was a volatile thing, even after a thousand years of growth and experience, a danger only controllable through a few whispered words and a magical crown. As he was now, returned to a version of himself a thousand years younger, stripped of all that experience and life and learning — and with those weapon-words locked firmly under her tongue, unusable against one so young — Tripitaka could not depend on him to use his powers for good.

Or at all.

As if reading her mind, Kaedo said, “I’m not like them.”

Tripitaka didn’t look at him, or at the little gods. “Yeah.”

“I’m _not_ ,” he repeated, misinterpreting her quiet response. There was a soft, seething anger to his voice now, and it made him sound for the first time exactly as young as he was. “I don’t have the elements at my fingertips or super-strength or some dumb cloud to take me anywhere I want. I don’t have immortality or god-training or whatever else those two idiots have waiting for them back in their perfect demon-free world.” His jaw clenched again, paling for a beat or two, and then he regained control. “All I have is me. And that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you this whole time: humans like us, we can’t sit around waiting for gods like them to show up and fix the mess they made. The only one you can depend on is yourself.”

Tripitaka still didn’t want to believe that; the Scholar had bred too much optimism in her to simply cast it all aside, even with all the evidence in the world.

She didn’t want to believe it; she certainly didn’t want to agree with it. But even she had to concede that this really wasn’t the best time to argue against it.

“Fine,” she sighed instead, waving off the point rather than engaging with it. “Show me the best hiding spot you found, and we’ll try to make the best of it.”

It was pointed, that ‘we’, and he seemed to realise it too.

“Good,” he said, with a firmness that rankled. “Let’s go.”

*

Getting the kids in line was not nearly as hard as she anticipated.

Pigsy, being naturally quiet and obedient, did what he was told without complaint or question. He was happy to help out, aiding Kaedo in packing their stuff away and cheerfully offering to carry some of the heavier things on his back; much like Monkey, his strength belied his smaller-than-usual stature, and the confident way he held their pack on his shoulders reminded Tripitaka so much of their Pigsy, older and much more overburdened, that she had to turn away and swallow down a lump in her throat.

Sandy fussed and cried a little, but she more or less refrained this time from throwing another tantrum. It was enough to keep her mollified, so it seemed, that she had her little fish in her arms, that they allowed her to walk under her own power, and that Tripitaka promised — lying, again, through tightly clenched teeth — that they would take her home to her family soon.

The lie, necessary though it was, came as a fresh blow every time she had to repeat it. The trust on Sandy’s little face was a painful burden to bear, her huge, pale eyes trembling with tears, the way she quieted down and grew brave, nodding and swallowing her sniffles, as though frightened that the promise would be revoked if she didn’t behave herself. It broke Tripitaka’s heart to do it, and she had to keep reminding herself, over and over, that the lie was for Sandy’s own good, that none of this was real, that she would be herself again soon and remember all the awful things Tripitaka didn’t have the courage to tell her.

It did little to assuage the guilt, but it was the truth, and she held it close like a lifeline.

Monkey, too, was unexpectedly agreeable. He grumbled and groused and complained, of course, called everything a waste of time and lamented that he was bored; all of this was typical of him at any age, though, and it spoke volumes of his willingness that he didn’t argue or threaten to fly off on his own.

Tripitaka could hazard a guess as to why, though she knew him well enough not to say it aloud and risk ruining a good thing; it was too telling, though, the way he kept casting surreptitious glances at the other two, Pigsy with his submissive silence, Sandy with her whimpering and her sporadic tears, and more telling by far was the way the sight of them made his fists clench at his sides, fierce and wild and protective.

He’d never admit it, she knew, and if she dared to suggest that perhaps a part of him cared she knew he would stop entirely. And so, knowing him, she pretended not to see it.

Instead, she turned her attention to Pigsy, standing quietly at the edge of the camp with their supplies strapped to his back, shuffling his feet but content to wait for instruction.

“Here,” she said to him, holding out the plant in its fresh, river-clean soil. “I think you should look after this.”

Pigsy blinked, then looked sadly down at the straps digging in to his arms. “Not carrying enough already?” he asked, with the quiet resignation of one long accustomed to having unwanted burdens piled onto his shoulders.

Tripitaka opened her mouth to reply, and his noticeable flinch twisted like a knife between her ribs. Flushing hot, he ducked his head and cringed, as though in anticipation of a blow or a reprimand. He stopped short of actually apologising, but the chagrin on his face was a devastating thing to behold.

Tripitaka felt her own features twist in empathy, and scrambled to reverse the unwitting damage she’d caused.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said hastily. “Of course you’re carrying enough. More than enough, really, Pigsy. I’m very grateful you offered to carry anything at all, you know it’s not necessary.”

“It’s not?”

It hurt that he didn’t seem to believe it, that he seemed unable to fathom the idea that helping might be something done voluntarily in this new world, and not demanded.

“Of course not. You don’t have to carry anything at all. And you definitely don’t need to take the plant if you don’t want to. It’s just...” She took a deep breath, weighed up in her mind the benefits and dangers of sharing this particular truth. “It has special properties. And I think it would be safest with you.”

Pigsy furrowed his brow, studying the plant a bit more closely. “Why me? I’m not exactly...”

And he cocked his head, shamefaced and wincing, at the preening, smirking, ‘all-powerful’ Monkey King.

Tripitaka sighed. “Believe me,” she muttered, “you’re much more reliable than Monkey will ever be.”

That wasn’t the reason, though, and the look on his face said that he could see it very clearly.

“Less likely to run off,” he guessed, gesturing again at his heavy load. “Hard to run at all with all this, but what’s one more thing to carry, I guess, if it helps.”

“It does help.” Said without thought, and instantly regretted; the look on his face made her ache to remind him that he had more merit than just his strength and size, that his value should never have been limited to how much weight he could bear. “But that’s not why I think you should keep hold of it. Like I said, it’s kind of a special plant, and... uh...”

She hesitated, unsure of how much she should tell him. He’d taken the thing into his hands now, but he was holding it loosely and carelessly, with none of the care and dedication his older self would have wanted, one ill-advised twitch away from tipping the poor thing upside-down.

“Sure,” he said absently. “Whatever helps. It’s no big deal.”

Tripitaka watched him fidget, watched the plant wobble precariously in his hand, untended. Her mind raced, her heart too, and then, without ever having made the decision to confess, she heard her own voice blurt out, “It’s going to save your life!”

Pigsy froze. The plant, no longer wobbling, froze as well.

“Huh?” He coughed, flushing. “I mean, uh, beg pardon?”

Silently cursing her lack of tact, if not the need for such honesty in the first place, Tripitaka took a deep breath and scrambled to explain. “It’s going to save your life,” she said again, slower. “Or so you and Sandy keep telling us, anyway. It was a gift from someone who... someone who seemed to know a lot of stuff about magical plants.”

Mycelia, mysterious creature of the woods, who knew enough to help Monkey regrow his missing hands, who knew enough to nurse the four of them back to health after Pigsy’s ill-advised attempt at picking flowers had poured poisonous pollen down their throats. Tripitaka wasn’t entirely sure she trusted her, but even so a part of her wished that she were here now; if anyone would know of some concoction to cleanse the grove and its soil of its strange wishing magic, surely it would be her.

Unfortunately, Mycelia being nowhere to be found, she only had her own wits, Kaedo’s shrugged indifference, and now a young, quizzical version of Pigsy, who was peering at the plant with fresh new eyes.

Sad eyes, Tripitaka thought, and the look was so striking next to what she’d expected — curiosity, confusion, a healthy dose of scepticism — that it took every ounce of self-control she had not to take the thing back and tell him she was only joking.

“Right,” he was saying, humming thoughtfully to himself, like her vague explanation told him everything he needed to know, and not in a particularly positive way. “I see.”

Tripitaka frowned, leaning in to study his face. It was a strange thing, making eye-contact with him and not needing to haul herself up onto her toes to do so; he was tall for his age, and broad and big, but still much smaller than the Pigsy she was used to. She would never think to call him fragile, even like this, but it was a startling contrast to the great hulking mountain of a god she knew so well. A pointed, sharp-edged reminder of the centuries upon centuries this poor boy still had to live through.

“Are you okay?” she asked him, marking the lines on his face, a strange sort of worldliness on one so very young.

“Sure,” he said, though the subtle edge to his voice offered a very different answer. “Should’ve expected something like this I guess. Daft to think they’d ever trust me to take care of myself. Should’ve known they’d try to...”

He stopped, shaking his head, and his fingers drummed a tense staccato against the edge of the pot.

Tripitaka felt a twist in her chest, watching him watch the little thing, realising too late how such a gesture might look to one already so stripped of self-esteem and self-worth. Not a spell of protection to this version of Pigsy, she realised, but another mark of his own uselessness: his family or peers, no doubt blessed with ample magic of their own, sending along a little ‘help’ for the soon-to-be recruit they didn’t believe had what it took to keep himself alive under his own merit.

“I don’t think Mycelia meant it like that,” she told him gently. “I mean, we all need a little healing magic sometimes.”

“Thanks.” He mustered a smile for her sake, but it was strained and a little bitter. “But I don’t see no-one else getting one.”

Her, she realised with a pang. He was talking about her, and perhaps about Kaedo too, about the obvious weak humans in their little group. He knew so little about their situation, only what meagre fractures and fragments she’d told him when she had the chance; from his perspective it must seem obvious that they, not he, would be the ones in need of magical protection. If anyone in their little group needed a plant sent by some charitable stranger to protect their lives, it surely wouldn’t be a god.

Not unless that god was considered unworthy of protecting his own.

Grudgingly, Tripitaka said, “I guess I can see why you might get the wrong idea about this.”

“Nothing wrong about it.” He held the plant up, watching the sunlight cut a path between its delicate, verdant leaves. “It’s fine. I’m used to it. Pigsy The Pushover, yeah? Probably wouldn’t even lift his hand against an army of demons if they broke down his own door.”

Tripitaka smiled. Warm and sincere, though she doubted he would draw any comfort from it. “That’s not something to be ashamed of,” she told him kindly. “To choose not to do harm to others... the Scholar who raised me would call it admirable. He’d be proud.”

“Course he would,” Pigsy grunted. “He’s human.”

Tripitaka, having been born to a very different world than the one he seemed to be thinking of, frowned in earnest puzzlement. “What difference does that make?”

“Humans are weak,” Pigsy explained; it was a familiar argument, but his voice carried none of the derision she heard so often in Monkey’s. “Next to us, anyhow. Can’t expect little insects to protect themselves against predators, that’d be silly.”

The smile gone, Tripitaka thinned her lips. “Right.”

Pigsy, it seemed, rather shared her disapproval, though he seemed wary of voicing it aloud; his expression soured, though, and he turned his face to the ground again.

“Gods are different,” he went on shyly. “Gods are str— gods are _supposed_ to be strong. You know? We’re blessed with all these great powers and whatnot, we’re supposed to... to _earn_ them. Be worthy of them.” He flexed his shoulders, effortlessly shifting the pack on his back. “I got all this strength and size and stuff. I’m supposed to use it. Be a soldier, be a fighter. Look after the little ones.”

Tripitaka got the distinct impression he wasn’t talking about infants and smaller children. “Humans, you mean.”

“It’s not quite like the world you keep talking about,” Pigsy said uneasily. “But demons are still out there, you know. And humans are so little and fragile and mortal. We’re meant to be your protectors, us gods. Your guardians, I guess you could say. We’re meant to look after you. But I’m not, I don’t, I can’t...”

And he shoved the plant back at her, eyes still fixed on his boots.

Tripitaka accepted it, sad but understanding. “You feel like you can’t even look after yourself,” she finished for him, echoing his words from before. His shoulders slumped in affirmation, his whole body going limp with surrender and shame. “Pigsy...”

He shook his head, still not looking up. “Doesn’t matter. They’re right, all of them: I’m not good enough by myself. Never was, never will be. But, hey, at least they care enough, right? Want to keep me alive enough they’d send along some magical thingy to do the job for me.”

“I don’t think that’s why...”

She stopped, shaking her head, realising that it would be a lost cause to try and convince this young boy of his merit, at least right now; that was a lesson he could only truly learn by experience and growth, by becoming that version of himself he didn’t believe could exist. A few comforting words from a little human stranger would mean less than nothing to a god already convinced of his worthlessness by others of his own kind. Even claiming as she did to know so much about his future, in his eyes, as in Monkey’s, she was still just a weak, stupid human.

“It’s fine,” he said again. “I know what I’m not.”

Tripitaka sighed. “I won’t try and guess what Mycelia was thinking when she gave it it to you,” she said, changing tack. “But for what it’s worth, your older self values his life highly enough to want this plant protected and well cared for. If you don’t want to take care of it, I can try and do it myself, but since it’s tied to you I thought you might prefer to...”

“...to have my life in my own hands for once?” There was no mirth in his laughter. “Thanks.”

Still, for all his sadness, he did take the thing back, and held it rather more gently than before.

Tripitaka watched him closely: the steadiness of his hand as he tended the small plant, the straightness of his back, the weight of their pack supported between his shoulders, just as comfortably as if he were his old self. Out of all three of them, she thought, he was somehow both the most like himself and the most different. He had a maturity about him that made her ache with sorrow, centuries beyond his youthful appearance, but where the Pigsy she knew was confident and comfortable in his body, his powers, and his chosen path, this one seemed to despise every part of himself, right down to his new boots.

It wasn’t the comfort she thought it would be, to know that he would grow up to overcome that feeling, to know that he would find peace with himself and his place in the world.

Still, because it was all she could give him, the conviction that came from knowing his future, she gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze and said, “I know it’s hard to see right now, Pigsy, but I promise you’ll be okay.”

“Course he will!” 

This from Monkey, strutting over to them like he was invited.

Pigsy, startled out of his brooding, looked up at him with understandable mistrust. “You what, now?”

“I said ‘course you will’. Are you deaf or something? Or... ooh, are you like the brat, all ‘never found your voice because your family are noisy and stupid’?”

“Uh...”

“Whatever.” He waved off the point, flashing the other god a grin that was somehow utterly insufferable and oddly touching. “The puny human is right, big guy: you don’t need those stupid losers who think you need some whatever-that-is to keep you in one piece. You’ve got us now.” His grin widened, sharpening at the edges with his trademark arrogance. “Or, well, _me_.”

Pigsy looked bemused. “You’re gonna keep me in one piece?”

“Pfft. _No_. I got better things to do.” He didn’t seem to be in a hurry to do any of them, though, Tripitaka noted. “Look. S’like I told the human: family stuff is stupid. The brat’s family is stupid, yours are _clearly_ stupid, and I don’t need one. But us... you and me, buddy, we’re awesome. We don’t need none of them to know that.”

“We don’t?”

Monkey barked a laugh. He drew his staff from his hair, extended it with a flourish, and poked the plant-pot with it, purposeful but unexpectedly gentle; for all his showmanship, Tripitaka noted, he seemed to recognise the kinds of boundaries that could not be pushed.

“Why would you want them,” he asked Pigsy, “when you got me?” He took a long step back, giving himself room to twirl his staff and flex. “I told you: I’m the best and most awesome god on Jade Mountain. I can teach you stuff that’ll make this weird little thing curl up and lose all its leaves. You want to be a fighter or a soldier or whatever? I can make you into the best one ever.”

From the look on his face, and from his own words on the subject, Tripitaka got the distinct impression that Pigsy didn’t want to be a fighter or soldier at all, and that this was a big part of the problem.

But Monkey’s offer was so earnest, and so much in good faith — a rare thing anyway, and perhaps the first kind of faith anyone had ever shown for him in his life — that he smiled a little bit even so.

“Thanks,” he said, and this time he actually seemed to mean it.

*

The most secluded place Kaedo had found for them to hide was, in fact, not very secluded at all.

A small copse in a deeper part of the forest, shorter trees thrown into heavy shadow by the larger ones looming above; the eerie darkness was a comfort, but not very much of one, and Tripitaka had to admit that Kaedo had been right — again — when he’d warned her to be on her guard. Though they were now some distance from the more well-travelled paths and walkways, nonetheless too much noise or movement would be easily spotted by a demon with a keen enough eye.

On the plus side, it had brought them a good distance away from the other clearing, the mysterious magical grove that had caused all this trouble in the first place. They’d have to do something about that place eventually, Tripitaka supposed, but for now it was enough to know that they were no longer within its grasp, and that their enemies weren’t likely to stumble on the place while tracking them.

Small victories. The only kind she would be celebrating for a while, so it seemed; best to relish them.

“Try and stay still and quiet,” she said to the three young gods. “We’re supposed to be hiding, okay?”

It was a pointless request; this she knew even before the words were out of her mouth. Even if she weren’t dealing with a trio of excitable young boys and a toddler prone to bouts of noisy crying, she would have still been dealing with Monkey, who even in his normal adult form found it impossible to keep still for more than ten seconds without running off to seek trouble.

Indeed, the five of them had barely even settled into their new hiding place, Pigsy still struggling to disentangle himself from their supplies, when Monkey started twitching and fidgeting and griping.

“This is boring,” he complained.

“Boring,” Sandy agreed soberly.

Monkey smirked, rewarding his tiny partner-in-crime by handing her a piece of dried fruit. “I like her better when she’s agreeing with me,” he said. “Still can’t get her to say ‘Monkey’, though.”

Sandy frowned, mouthing the syllables, then shrugged, threw the fruit back at him, and declared, “ _Stupid_.”

Tripitaka definitely, definitely did not laugh. It would be wholly irresponsible, as their caretaker, to encourage such terrible behaviour, and she definitely, definitely did not indulge the idea of doing so for her own much-needed amusement.

“Maybe try and teach her something easier,” she said instead, to Monkey, and hoped that the task would keep the two of them relatively quiet for a time.

Alas, no such luck. Monkey seemed not to have heard her at all; he’d caught the fruit-projectile between his finger and thumb and was looking comically between that and the toddler who had thrown it, characteristically offended and annoyed. 

“I take it back,” he griped, booping Sandy’s nose with the closed fist of his free hand. “I don’t like the stupid thing at all.”

So saying, he tossed the piece of fruit into his mouth, then whirled lithely on his heels and stomped off to the other side of the copse to bother Pigsy instead.

“Still and quiet,” Kaedo giggled, sidling up to Tripitaka. “Easy, right?”

Tripitaka clenched her teeth. “Don’t you have anything helpful to say?”

His smirk was insufferable, and no doubt warranted. “Actually, I do.”

He leaned back, then, arms folded, staring at her as if waiting for an invitation to share his thoughts. Tripitaka knew that particular stare entirely too well by this point; it said that he had a great deal to say, both helpful and not, and that she most certainly wouldn’t want to hear any of it.

That did not mean she didn’t need to.

Still, she let it sit for a moment, letting his irritating smugness wash over her; only fractionally less annoying than Monkey, at least Kaedo occasionally had a good idea to his name. She may not like it, but the boy had experience and intelligence, and when he had something to say — whether or not she wanted to hear it — it was usually sound.

“Out with it,” she said at last, bracing herself with a sigh.

“All right.” He unfolded his arms, looked at her steadily, then folded them again, clearly relishing the chance to appear more knowledgeable than her. Yet more typically adolescent behaviour, she thought, and desperately missed having other adults around to talk to. “You want helpful, here it is: we’re not getting out of this mess until she—” He tilted his chin at Sandy, sitting quietly at their feet with her fist in her mouth. “—learns to ‘process’ whatever feelings she had that got us into it in the first place.”

Tripitaka knew this already, of course; the Scroll of Knowledge had all but confirmed it. Still...

“That’s not helpful,” she accused, biting down on the urge to pout like one of the children. “Did you forget that she’s a toddler right now? Her grasp of complex emotion is limited to ‘home’, ‘fish’, and ‘stupid’.”

Once again, she probably deserved the bemused, withering look he gave her. “So, not too different from usual, then?”

“I’m serious, Kaedo!” Her voice cracked; she cursed it, and herself. “The stuff she needs to process to make this right... it’s bad stuff. It’s really, really bad stuff. And look at her: she’s tiny and helpless and vulnerable, and all she wants is to go back home to a family that—”

She stopped herself, biting down on her tongue before she could reveal the truth to the oblivious little girl at her feet.

She had no idea where Sandy’s small self would grasp the word ‘abandon’, but it was bad enough that she herself did. Bad enough that she knew the horrible future that was coming for the child, the years upon years of pain and loneliness that would leave her fully grown and no better able to process her feelings than she was now, chewing her fist and babbling at a scrap of folded cloth like it was her most cherished friend.

Kaedo, perhaps sensing some part of that, didn’t press her to finish.

He was looking down at Sandy, too, with an odd look on his face, as close to contemplative as she had ever seen him. In the few days since he’d invited himself along on the quest, she’d never seen him look anything other than impatient, exasperated, or faintly amused; the sudden quietude was unexpected, and made Tripitaka think of Pigsy, so shy and quiet, unlike the god she knew.

“She got us into this,” Kaedo said after a beat, albeit with none of the smugness he’d had just a moment ago. “Are you seriously planning to just sit around and wait until she’s old enough to suck it up and deal with it?”

“Of course not,” Tripitaka snapped, perhaps a little too sharply. “But it’s painful enough to talk about that stuff when she’s her normal self, you know? When she’s fully grown, all capable and powerful and...” She sighed. “...able to put two words together.”

Kaedo snorted. “I’ve been travelling with you guys for, like, three days,” he quipped, “and I have _never_ seen her do that.”

Tripitaka bristled. “Don’t sidestep the point,” she snapped, defensive. “And don’t be cruel. What she’s been through, none of us can even imagine. It’s awful, Kaedo, and it’s not fair, and it’s wrong, and how, _how_ am I supposed to look that small, trusting toddler in the eye and tell her that she needs to ‘suck it up and deal with’ things that no child should ever, ever...”

She trailed off, unable to finish.

Kaedo made a disapproving noise, but he seemed to know better this time than to try and push her; he just watched, lips thinned into a straight line, as Tripitaka crouched in front of Sandy and gently pried her fingers out of her mouth.

“You’re not doing her any favours, hiding from it,” he said, very quietly. “Or the other two, either.”

“I know that,” Tripitaka sighed. “But they’re young and confused, and they’re barely hanging on by a thread as it is. Sandy’s scared and homesick, and who can blame her for that? Pigsy thinks this is all some elaborate plot to ‘toughen him up’ or something, and Monkey—”

“You called?”

Apparently Monkey was as restless as he was bored. He was back by her side in a single bound, clearly itching for a change of scenery, however small, leaving Pigsy blinking confusedly at the god-shaped dust-cloud left behind in his wake.

“We were talking _about_ you,” Tripitaka informed him coolly. “Not _to_ you.”

“Oh.” He furrowed his brows, like he couldn’t really see a difference, then waved the point away like it wasn’t worth another moment’s consideration. “Eh, whatever. I’m bored.”

Tripitaka felt her patience — what little of it hadn’t already disintegrated — begin to fray.

“I know you’re bored,” she sighed. “But you’re the reason we have to hide out here in the first place. Is it really so impossible to just keep a low profile for five seconds, Monkey?”

Predictably, that made him bristle. It was no surprise that his younger self was just as defensive and arrogant as the Monkey she knew, and just as determined not to admit to his own mistakes.

“I got us free stuff,” he reminded her, voice rising in anger. “Those stupid villagers _loved_ me. They thought I was awesome and amazing, just like I told you. Why should I have to pretend I’m not what I am, just so that some stupid human monk won’t be all jealous of me?”

Some stupid human—

Tripitaka rounded on Kaedo, spitting fire. “Seriously?”

Kaedo shrugged. “He wouldn’t believe anything else.”

“Of course he wouldn’t.” She took a deep breath, held it for five full seconds, then said to Monkey, “No-one is jealous of you, Monkey. Least of all me. Trust me on that.”

Monkey smirked, disgustingly triumphant. “That’s _exactly_ what someone who was jealous would say.”

Kaedo, who had clearly had this conversation with him a dozen times already, threw up his hands and said to Tripitaka, “What’d I tell you?”

Tripitaka sighed.

“Monkey,” she said, hearing her voice crack with frustration. “This is really important, okay? You’re not the great, awesome, best-loved god in the world any more. There are a lot of people out there — a lot of _demons_ — who want you dead. If they find out you’re just a child right now...”

“Let them!” He flexed, comical and absurd with no muscle to speak of. “I’ll squash every demon from here to Jade Mountain. No stinking demon is any match for the Monkey King!”

“Those ‘stinking demons’ _rule the world_ because of the Monkey King!”

It burst out of her, anger blinding her to empathy, to compassion, to everything except frustration and the need to make him understand. 

This version of him, it seemed, was exactly like his older self, with his thousand years’ worth of arrogance and self-importance, his ego and his prejudices grating against her human softness, her human patience, her human upbringing, driving her to fits of temper and rage she never experienced with Pigsy or Sandy.

He was just like his older self, yes, only worse. Worse because she would not use the crown sutra to cut him down to size, worse because he hadn’t yet lived to see the damage his arrogance had wrought, because he did not understand the hellish world his bad choices had brought to life.

He always brought out the worst in her, she thought sadly. And now it was too late to undo the damage her latest explosion had caused, too late to take back the words that were too tragically true.

Monkey’s eyes were widening, his jaw turning pale as he clenched it and ground his teeth. She could see a thousand emotions rippling across his face: anger, disbelief, betrayal, then, finally, hurt.

“What?” he croaked, so thick with horror that Tripitaka almost wondered if someone was using the crown sutra.

“It’s complicated,” she choked, then turned desperately, imploringly, to Kaedo. “A little help, please?”

“Nuh-uh, you’re on your own!” He ducked out of her reach, then dashed to the other side of the copse with the desperate speed of an animal scrambling to escape a wildfire. “Hey, Pigsy! Need a hand?”

And then they were alone: she and Monkey, and his anger-disbelief-betrayal- _hurt_.

His youth painted all of those feelings in stark, brutal colours. They were almost of a height to each other, and that was new too; she wasn’t used to talking to him without having to crane her neck, ever aware of the differences between them in age and power and strength.

She’d never seen him look so vulnerable before, or so small; he was looking at her now like he truly valued what she had to say, and that was something else she’d never seen in him. In his older, ‘wiser’ form, he only ever deferred to her with reluctance, all gritted teeth and taut shoulders, tension in admitting he needed to look to someone else for guidance. He seldom listened to her, obeyed her still more rarely, and he only sought her counsel when his own recklessness had gotten him into trouble.

He resented her, she thought sometimes, for being more familiar with the world he’d woken up in, and he resented the world itself, too, for painting him as the villain he never was.

There was none of that resentment in the boy who stood before her now. Young and idealistic, the starry-eyed dreamer who imagined himself a god among gods, had just learned in the worst possible way that he was in fact their downfall. He wasn’t looking at her with reluctance now, wasn’t looking to her for guidance because he had no choice; he was looking at her like she’d unmade the whole world and reshaped it into something terrible, a nightmare that was all his fault.

And so it was, all of it true, but how was she supposed to make him understand?

“It’s complicated,” she heard herself whisper again, hopeless and helpless and so, so sorry. “This isn’t the world you think it is, Monkey. It’s changed.”

“I don’t understand!” He looked helpless too, and that helplessness only made him angrier. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

She tried to explain. She tried to talk to him gently, compassionately, tried to soften the serrated, poisoned edges, but it was no good; no matter how sweet she tried to make it, the truth was a bitter and foul-tasting thing, and even if she’d been a real monk she would never have been able to stop it from cutting him open.

The world in chaos, humans subjugated to the ruling class of demons, the few surviving gods hunted or hiding or worse. They, three misfit gods and a fake monk, the last bastion of all hope. A bad enough reality to impress on a young boy with stars in his eyes and the dream of making himself a world-renowned legend; bad enough just to know that this was the future, but to have to explain that it was all because of _him_? That for the want of a stolen crown, a fit of arrogance, a moment of misjudgement, he had plunged the world into five centuries of darkness and misery and pain?

Small wonder he recoiled, sickened and stricken and struck.

“You’re trying,” she said, very quietly, “to make it better.”

It didn’t help; she didn’t know if she’d honestly expected it to.

“I don’t get it,” he whined again, tugging futilely at the crown still stuck to his head, the lone marker of his identity in a body too small to bear its weight and meaning. “Why would I sell out the whole world to demons for some stupid ugly crown that won’t come off? I don’t even like the stupid, dumb thing! I don’t want it!”

Tripitaka tried, and failed, to smile. “I think it was a symbol,” she said, rather generously. “You and the Master had an argument, and I think—”

“Liar!”

His anger was rising, white-hot and deadly, but it wasn’t any kind of anger she’d ever seen in him before.

His older self took to anger in the way of a breaking storm, arrogance and indignation scraped raw until only the violence remained; his younger self, at least as much as she’d seen him until now, just grew restless, boredom and his natural irritability twisting into frustration, into lashing out like the temperamental, directionless boy he was.

Neither of those things were what she saw in him now.

This was a whole new kind of anger, unfettered and untempered and wounded; it was an anger born out of desperation and hurt, of watching the world begin to burn, the kind of anger that spawned from survival and panic.

It was the kind of anger that often led to dangerous, unpredictable things.

Tripitaka took a nervous step backwards. “Monkey, please listen to me...”

“No!” He was retreating as well, stumbling and staggering, back and back and back, like her words were physical blows, like he was as much afraid as he was angry. “No, you’re a liar! A stupid human liar! You don’t know nothing about nothing, and you don’t know nothing about me!” His hands twitched and trembled, balling into fists at his side, but he didn’t lash out or draw his staff. “This world loves me. Everyone loves me! The stupid humans in that stupid village, they loved me, they loved me, they—”

“They were _thankful_ ,” Tripitaka explained desperately. “Because we...” Not wanting to break eye-contact, she gestured blindly down at Sandy. “Because _she_ saved their children from a demon.”

Monkey barely spared a glance for the wide-eyed, teary toddler at his feet before barking out a cold, belligerent laugh. “Now I _know_ you’re lying.”

He raised a hand, then, the movement jagged and uncoordinated. Tripitaka’s heart leaped into her mouth; for a fraction of a second she really thought he would draw his weapon and try to hurt her; experience had taught her that he was impulsive enough to do just about anything if he thought he had a good reason, and she was just about to start begging unashamedly for her life when he spun on his heel and broke into a run.

Realisation struck, too late.

Tripitaka lurched forward, choking on her panic. “Monkey, don’t—”

But once again it was too late.

This Monkey, just like his older, worldlier counterpart, would not be swayed from a decision he had made, and he had all the power in the world to make sure she could not stop him. One hand in the air, knees bent and shoulders engaged, he let out a piercing whistle, a series of clicks, and—

“I’ll prove it!” he shouted. “I’ll prove that you’re a liar!”

And in the split-second before she reached him, he leaped up into the air and disappeared into the stratosphere.

*


	7. Chapter 7

*

The instant Monkey and his cloud disappeared, Sandy burst into tears.

Frowning up at the empty sky, Tripitaka rather wished she could do the same.

“I have to go after him,” she heard herself mumble, frenzied and frenetic. “I have to stop him before he—”

“Too late for that.”

This from Kaedo, interrupting in a slightly tremulous voice. Tripitaka had almost forgotten he was there — had almost forgotten everything, in truth, beyond the disappearing cloud and its angry, wounded occupant — but there he was, standing in front of her like he’d been there the whole time, gripping her shoulder with one hand and waving the other in front of her face, trying to draw her attention back to the ground where it belonged.

It only partially worked. Tripitaka tried to look him in the eye, but her vision wouldn’t focus on anything lower than the skyline; everything seemed blurred and distorted and hazy, tinted with shades of red.

“He’ll get himself killed!” she heard herself croak. Her voice sounded distorted too, as disjointed and strange as her vision; dimly, she realised she was panicking. “I have to go after him, I have to stop him, I have to protect him—”

“You have to protect _them_.”

Kaedo gripped her arms and shook her, forceful but not too rough, forcing her to look around her: down, to the small, sobbing Sandy at her feet, and across to the not-so-small Pigsy, sitting disconsolately on the ground a short distance away. Both of them depending on her, both of them looking to her to keep them safe.

But then, wasn’t the same true for Monkey too, whether he’d want to admit it or not? Wasn’t she supposed to be his guardian as well? He may be the most powerful of the three, as he always was no matter his form, but he was still a child, confused and not thinking clearly. And now he was out there alone, angry and hurting, in a world he did not understand.

“Did you hear me?” she rasped at Kaedo. “He’s going to get himself killed out there!”

“He’s going to get the rest of us killed first!” Kaedo shot back, raising his voice to be heard over Tripitaka’s frenzy and the rising pitch of Sandy’s howling. “He’s just broadcast our location to every demon in a hundred leagues!” He shook her again, more urgently. “They’re going to come for us, Tripitaka!”

“They’re going to go for _him_ —”

“No, they’re not!” His breathing was nearly as ragged as hers, voice pitching with a horror that mirrored her own. “Think about it, will you? Who would you go after if you were a demon? The all-powerful Monkey King, out of reach on his magical flying cloud, or the little human monk, alone and vulnerable, with two sacred scrolls?”

Tripitaka shook her head, feeling dizzy. “If they realise he’s only a child—”

“He’s still a zillion feet above the ground!”

“For now! But how long do you think he’ll stay up there, Kaedo?”

Kaedo shook her again, as though trying to jolt some sense into her by physical force. “How long do you think _they’ll_ need to pick off the rest of us?”

A good point. Tripitaka felt her muscles slacken, the fight going out of her as she weighed it up against her own.

“All right.” It was difficult to draw a full breath; she could hear her heartbeat hammering in her ears, the desperate rolling thunder of panic. “So what do we do?”

Content that she’d regained at least some modicum of self-awareness, if not self-control, Kaedo stepped back.

“You can start by shutting her up,” he said, nudging Sandy with his boot, then cast a not-at-all-subtle glance over his shoulder. “I’ll see if I can make a fighter out of Mr. Pacifist over there. You know, just in case it comes down to...”

He broke off, swallowing hard, and balled his hands into fists at his sides. For all his bravado, it seemed he was no more eager to go toe-to-toe with actual demons than she herself was. Ashamed as she was to admit it, Tripitaka found that strangely comforting.

A little bit, at least.

The fangkris, hanging heavy and deadly at her hip, felt like a burden shared between them. A gift, given freely and taken without thought so that she might be better able to protect herself, but she realised now for the first time the cost of that kindness: Kaedo was unarmed, as much dependent on her ability to wield the thing as he was on his own resourcefulness, his speed and his feet and his fists. Little use against a demon, human fists, but at least he knew how to use them.

It was more than Tripitaka could say for herself and the fangkris.

Unbidden, her mind’s eye flooded with the faces of all the demons she’d faced before. Locke, Raxion and the Shaman, Davari and his sentinels. The angry legions chasing them from the Jade Mountain, led by the vicious Kimura One-Eye. Cranius Kang and his dazzling intellect, the only demon she’d ever met who fought with wits instead of weapons. And of course, the most recent: Lady Tsumori, wearing Sandy’s face to cajole and corner and cage her. 

All of them deadly in their own way, but she’d faced them all and survived.

At least, she’d survived long enough for her gods to leap in and save her.

But that wouldn’t happen this time.

She was the saviour this time, and they the ones in need of saving. Whatever was coming for them now, she was completely on her own. She couldn’t trust that it would be enough simply to hold her ground and bide her time; there would be no last-minute rescue here. Her gods were children now, all three of them, and it was her turn to stand up and be strong for their sakes; she needed to fight for them, as they had always been so eager to fight for her.

She looked at Kaedo, his young features drawn tight with determination, standing strong and courageous even with only his wits and his knuckles defend himself. She looked down at the fangkris, its jagged edges and its poisoned tip, and she thought of the trust he’d placed in her by handing it over, the conviction that she would wield it well.

She would have to: she no longer had a choice.

She let her hand hover over the handle for a moment, fingers flexing in rhythm with her breath as she willed it to slow. One heartbeat, two, then three... then, at last, she nodded.

“You deal with him,” she said, turning her voice to iron. “I’ll deal with her.”

*

It was exactly as frustrating as she expected it to be, trying to get Sandy to quiet down.

For a start, she was far too young to grasp the seriousness of their situation, and Tripitaka was not well equipped to explain it on her level. Her attempts to impress upon the bawling toddler the importance of stealth and silence, now more than ever with demons no doubt closing in from all sides, was met at first with confusion and then with flat-out terror, which only added to the pitch of her cries.

She wanted Monkey to come back. She wanted him to take her with him, to fly her back to her home and her family, to carry her away to where she would be safe.

Tripitaka understood all of those sentiments, she really did. But her compassion, already frayed, was a difficult thing to hold on to when Sandy wouldn’t stop screaming Monkey’s name.

“At least you’ve finally learned how to say it,” Tripitaka said with a sigh. “I’m sure he’ll be really proud of you when he comes back from wherever he’s stormed off to.”

 _If he comes back_.

_If he—_

The thought sat like a stone in the pit of her stomach, nauseous dread filling her mind with unwanted visions of all the trouble he might be getting into, out on his own in this strange new world that hated him. Again, she was struck by the desperate ache to follow him, hunt him and track him down — never mind the impossibility of the task — and bring him back to where he would be safe, to where she might be able to protect him and—

No.

Kaedo was right: even if she could have somehow ascended to the heavens and dragged him back down to earth like she wanted, Monkey didn’t need her protection as urgently as the others did. Even now, young and much too wild for his own good, Monkey was the best equipped out of all of them to take care of himself, at least in the short-term. He was the only one who still had absolute mastery of his powers and talents; even as a child, he was an unstoppable force.

Besides which, she was mortal and slow and bound to the earth, while he was none of those things. If he didn’t want to come back, there was little she could do to force his hand.

Not without using the crown sutra, at least, and that...

No.

She shook off the useless fretting, and turned grudgingly back to Sandy.

“Sandy, you really need to stop crying,” she pressed, urgency making her voice squeaky and frail. “It’s really important, okay? We’re in danger.”

Apparently this was not news to the wailing toddler, who only cried harder. “I don’t like it, I want to go _home_!”

The frustration in Tripitaka’s chest burst into flame, scorching its way up into her throat, turning to acid, to anger, to a fit of temper she couldn’t control and couldn’t stop, to—

“That’s never going to happen, Sandy!”

To another explosion, just as harmful and terrible as the last.

As if she hadn’t learned her lesson from Monkey’s absence.

As if she wasn’t—

Sandy stopped crying.

She stared up at Tripitaka, her wet eyes suddenly huge and helpless, and for a long, devastating moment it seemed like the shock of Tripitaka’s outburst had shaken all of the sound and speech right out of her body.

Then, in the tiniest voice Tripitaka had ever heard, she whispered, “Never?”

Smothered by the momentary silence, Tripitaka’s frustration burned itself out, dissolving to nothing and leaving behind a sour-tasting mouthful of regret and shame.

She had worked so hard to keep from using the crown sutra on Monkey, to rein in her frustration with him and with Sandy, the two of them impossible to handle in their present youthful states. She’d worked so hard to keep herself on a tight leash, to keep those ever-present frustrations leashed and checked, and all for what?

Twice now, she’d lost her temper in a critical moment, and twice she had hurt her little charges in the most unspeakable, unforgiveable ways.

Monkey was gone, flown off to heaven only knew where, angry and wounded and betrayed. Sandy, still here, was looking up at her like she had just yanked the whole world out from under her, and Tripitaka didn’t know how to take back the words she knew were true.

“Sandy,” she rasped, feeling queasy. “It’s not... I didn’t... it’s...”

Sandy blinked up at her, completely and utterly heartbroken.

“Oh,” she said, in that same croaking whisper. Then, turning the word over on her tongue like medicine, unpleasant and sickening but something she had to swallow, “ _Never_.”

And she flopped onto the ground, curled up in a ball, and began to sob, this time without making a sound.

Tripitaka left her there.

Not looking back, not daring to see the pain she was leaving in her wake, she staggered over to the other side of the copse, to where Kaedo was speaking quietly with Pigsy. She could make out only a few words of what they were saying, most of them related to weapons or self-defence, and she noted Pigsy’s rake sitting on the ground between them. Part of her questioned the wisdom in letting a young boy wield a lightning-imbued rake, but she supposed Pigsy was still ultimately a god, however sorely he wished he wasn’t.

She wondered, idly curious in the way of young women raised by academics, if the rake would recognise its owner, even in his present state. Would it welcome him as an old friend, or resist him as an unknown stranger?

No matter, she supposed; they needed all the firepower they could get their hands on, and that meant using the thing. No matter its personal feelings on the subject.

She slipped into the space between the two boys, heaved a deep sigh, and said to Kaedo, “I think I broke her.”

Kaedo, displaying his usual lack of compassion and empathy, merely shrugged and said, “At least she’s quiet.”

“Because I _broke_ her!”

She wanted to shake him. She wanted to shout in his face, to pour out those destructive frustrations onto the one person who could bear them without flying away or falling to pieces. She wanted—

She wanted her gods back.

She wanted Monkey, just as arrogant but with the harder edges of experience, of regret, of understanding, the clean lines of recognising his mistakes and the damage they’d wrought. Monkey, more worldly and more wise, for all that he would gleefully deny it, age and maturity cutting through the differences between truth and rumour, the history ignited in his blood and the histories written down on scrolls. Monkey, who had seen first-hand the high price of his pride and was trying — stumbling, clumsy, but trying — to make it right.

She wanted Pigsy, her Pigsy, who loved food and loved himself, who was as massive in heart as he was in body, who was strong and powerful and so full of life, who had lived long enough to be wholly unashamed of all those things. She wanted the Pigsy who always had a twinkle in his eye, the Pigsy who had made peace with his body, who knew how to use it for good, who knew what it was to be wanted, the Pigsy who loved decadence so much he’d make bad decisions in its name, the Pigsy who still had enough of his spirit left to make the right choice when the moment came.

And she wanted Sandy. Her Sandy, who was quiet, who didn’t cry or fuss or throw tantrums, who knew that ‘home’ was no place for her, who didn’t understand her own feelings but was trying to get better. Sandy, who had suffered so horribly and yet still had the softest heart she’d ever known, who had been abandoned and abused, mistreated and misperceived, who had been told that she was monstrous for as long as she could remember but still refused to let it become true. Sandy, who had endured the very worst things the world had to offer and still wrote poetry and talked to the water and lived a life of deepest devotion.

She wanted them all. Her gods, as she knew them, older than her and still somehow less mature, each of them with their bad choices and bad experiences, with their separate and shared pain, pain that she knew she’d never be able to fully balm. She wanted—

She looked to the sky, empty and cloudless, and wondered if Monkey was safe. She looked back at Sandy, curled up and crying, and knew there was nothing she could say make it right.

Beside her, suddenly strangely sober, Kaedo said, “I’ll handle her.”

It came so much out of nowhere that Tripitaka could only assume her inner feelings were showing on her face, too rich and too brutal for even his youthful indifference to ignore.

Ashamed and angry with herself, she nonetheless couldn’t hide her relief, or her earnest gratitude. “Thank you,” she rasped, swallowed hard. “Because apparently I can’t handle her at all.”

True enough: wasn’t that why they were in this situation in the first place?

She watched Kaedo stomp over to the huddled, whimpering ball of toddler, watched him kneel carefully in front of her, reaching out slow and careful to lay a hand on her small back. Compassion clearly came hard to him, but he tried now just the same, because he had to, because Tripitaka couldn’t; watching him, she felt her own self-loathing sharpen until it was almost unbearable.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right, leaving the care of one child to another, but she felt so much out of her depth she couldn’t breathe. She was drowning, wholly and completely, and though she floundered and flailed, struggled and scrambled and strained with all the strength she had in her, still it seemed she could not hold her head above the water alone.

She would make it up to him, she decided firmly. She would learn self-reliance and self-defence, just as he’d told her she must; she would learn, by practice and necessity, to protect herself and protect all of them.

She drew the fangkris, let its weight settle in her hand. Heavy, deadly, poisoned; each of its sharp serrations felt like a life in her hands, to end or to spare on a whim, as the heat of battle or blind panic dictated.

She swallowed, feeling ill, but she did not put it back on her belt.

“Yeah,” Pigsy said, cocking his head at the weapon, as though sensing her discomfort; perhaps he did, at that; if anyone was equipped to understand a monk’s squeamishness, surely it would be a pacifistic young god. “Me too.”

Tripitaka took a deep breath, steadying herself before she turned to look at him.

He was watching her with guarded curiosity, eyes on the dagger rather than her face, clearly recognising something kindred in her reluctance to hold it. A rare thing indeed, she supposed, in the world he came from, to meet with one as disinclined to combat as he was. The thought made her want all the more to throw the weapon away, to draw her robes tight around herself — and perhaps around him too — and pretend she really was prohibited from taking up arms.

She didn’t. There was too much at stake, too much riding on her proving herself capable. Too much riding, too, on her being willing to deal the killing blow if she had to.

“I’m not really cut out for this,” she sighed, letting Pigsy see that much at least. “Kaedo’s right: I’ve gotten too used to having you— that is, to having three powerful gods around to watch out for me. I’m not used to being the one who has to...”

“Yeah.” There was a heavier weight to the word this time, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. Even as a boy, Pigsy had a softness to him, one that all the world’s violence couldn’t toughen up. “Your friend, the little lad over there... he says there’s demons coming for us. Says we all have to do what we can.” He swallowed raggedly, watching as Tripitaka’s fingers twitched over the fangkris’s handle, and seemed to draw strength and courage from her lack of it. “Don’t know that I’m any better at this stuff than you, really.”

It was a powerful thing for him say, and Tripitaka knew it. He wasn’t simply comparing their inexperience or squeamishness or hesitation to do harm to others: he was a god, comparing himself directly to a human.

She knew what that meant, and she was both touched and hurt.

“We’ll figure it out together,” she promised, praying that it would prove true. “I don’t want to do this either.”

Pigsy sighed, looking rather the opposite of comforted. “Course you don’t. It’s in your blood not to want to.”

But it was in his, he didn’t say. A young god, growing more powerful day by day, destined to one day lead the armies of heaven against demons far worse than any they would face today. Tripitaka knew this much from his older self, though he had been pretty reluctant to talk about it; she knew where his path would lead.

It had just never occurred to her to wonder if it was a path he’d chosen for himself.

Monkey loved fighting so much. He revelled in the thrill of combat, the rush of victory, the quickness of body and mind. He lived for adrenaline, excitement, and action. Pigsy, though he’d never shown the same eagerness to ‘bust heads’, as Monkey so often put it, was so talented Tripitaka had just assumed he felt the same way.

She was learning a lot, she realised now, from his younger self.

She watched, heart in mouth, as he stooped to pick up his rake.

It didn’t fit his young body at all. He was large for his age, broad-shouldered and broad-bellied and very tall, but even so the weapon seemed to dwarf him completely. In his hands, it seemed to become more lethal than she’d ever seen it before; as he adjusted his grip, angling the thing away from him as though afraid it would turn around and bite him, his whole body seemed to shrink down and become even younger than it already was.

A child holding an instrument of death and destruction. Maybe that was expected of gods back in the world that was, but to Tripitaka, born to a very different one, it was jarring, uncomfortable, and deeply upsetting.

She’d always assumed that the opposite would be true. A world where gods ruled over everything must surely bring peace and unity, or so the Scholar had always taught her. And perhaps it had, for humans like them. She’d never given much thought to the gods who kept the world in balance, taking up arms against the demon populations so that those mindless humans who walked the world below might never have to do the same.

Perhaps she should have.

Looking at Pigsy now, watching him study the prongs of his rake with a critical, assessing eye, looking centuries too old for his soft body and soft eyes, she found that she could suddenly think of nothing else.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she meant it though she could not say what for.

He shook his head, as though breaking out of a dream. “It is what it is,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “At least here I only have to fight the kinds of demons that come at me first. And you don’t... that is, it’s not...”

He grimaced, cutting himself off before he could finish, looking helpless.

Ashamed, she could tell, of the idyllic dream he was too afraid to voice.

_You don’t value it here. You don’t praise folks for the number of their kills._

Swallowing hard, Tripitaka closed the space between them, covering his occupied hand with her free one and pressing lightly. This, at least, was a kind of comfort she could give.

“We don’t,” she said, with what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “The people in this world... they’re tired of fighting. They’ve been fighting all their lives, not because it’s expected of them or because their families want them to prove themselves or anything like that, but because they’ll die if they don’t. There’s not a soul out there who wouldn’t lay down their arms and stop fighting if they could.”

It was not unexpected, the way Pigsy turned his eyes to the ground.

It was not unexpected, either, the glimmer of tears she saw in them.

“Sounds nice.” He stretched up, not lifting his head, and trailed his fingertips along the prongs of his rake. Delicate and careful, like it was the most natural thing in the world for a young boy to familiarise himself with the keen points of a deadly weapon. “I mean, not the whole ‘dying’ part. But not wanting to. Not feeling like spilling blood is the only way to...”

“It’s not.” She stepped back, adjusting her grip on her own weapon, readying herself as well for a fight she did not want. “Not for us, and not for you. I know it’s hard to believe, Pigsy, but you... that is, the you that you grow up into... he doesn’t fight unless he has to, unless he has no other choice. He’d do whatever it takes to keep from having to use that rake on someone else.”

 _Whatever it takes_ , her mind echoed, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from adding, _even sleep with demons_.

It wouldn’t help to tell him that, even if he were old enough to understand it. Their choices, all of them, were their own, and they had all made peace with each other’s weaknesses by now; she could no more judge Pigsy for choosing the path of least resistance with Locke than she blamed Monkey for the arrogant tantrum that set into motion the decline of the world; terrible choices, both, and many people suffered for them, but they had never been the active, conscious participants that the world wanted them to believe.

If she was lucky, Monkey would return and let her explain that to him as well, so he could see his own truth more clearly.

For now, she had to content herself with Pigsy, the only one of her small gods intelligent enough to grasp these things.

Such a brilliant mind, she thought, for one so young. So clever and so full of quiet wisdom. He could have become a great scholar, perhaps even a poet, if only he’d been given the chance. 

How typical that they would choose to bully it out of him instead. Typical of all living things, it seemed, gods as much as demons or humans or anything else, to wipe out the weakness of a strong mind and twist the body instead, making a soft, tender soul into an instrument of violence and never stopping to mourn the silence that could have been song.

She wondered now, for the first time in her life, if perhaps the great and wonderful gods of old were more like Monkey, in his pride and arrogance, than the monks and scholars presumed.

It was a sobering, startling thought, but one that she thankfully had little time to contemplate. Either sensing the turn of her thoughts or else simply trying to outrun his own, Pigsy cleared his throat and brought her back to the more immediate present. Tripitaka blinked, cleared her own throat, then nodded and gave him her full attention.

“I should...” He coughed again, then tried once more. “I should go scouting or something, right? Scope out the area, see if there’s really demons out there?” Another cough, this one shaky and growing nervous. “Try and get the drop on them, if I can?”

It was potentially a good plan. Also, rather more likely, a very bad one. 

“You’re just a boy,” Tripitaka pointed out, as if either one of them needed reminding of that.

“I’m a god,” he shot back, face flushing hot. “I’m supposed to—”

“Not here.”

Not while she was in charge, at least. He was holding the rake, willing to use it if he had to, holding himself in a pugilistic, combative stance ready for whatever demons came at him or his friends. He was doing more than anyone should ever ask of one so young, unable to see that those expectations were unreasonable, that it wasn’t fair or just or right, that no child, god or not, should ever have to ready himself to slay monsters.

This alone was more than enough: that he was ready, that he was willing, that he would defend himself and the others if they were attacked. How could she—

How could _anyone_ expect more of him than that?

Tripitaka certainly couldn’t. No matter that the idea was sound, that scouting the nearby area would give them a precious and much-needed advantage. No matter that he was a god, perfectly able to protect and take care of himself. No matter any of that: she would not put any more responsibility on his shoulders, and she would not allow him to put it upon his own. There was enough of that lying in wait for him already, in the future that was his past. She couldn’t save him from that, but she could save him from this.

He fixed her with a serious look, determination gleaming in his eyes. Tripitaka was proud of him, and deeply saddened at the same time, that he felt so obligated to be so brave.

“It’s good strategy,” he insisted, in the hesitant tone of a nervous student parroting his teacher’s words: a lesson he didn’t really believe in or understand but one he’d been told was important. “Find your enemy before they find you. We’ll be cornered in here if they catch us unawares. If we can pick off even just one or two before that happens...” He straightened, gripping the rake a little tighter. “Dunno much about strategy or whatnot, but I do know that’s a good one.”

Perhaps so.

No, definitely so. He was a smart boy, and he was right.

But still...

Still, Tripitaka shook her head. “I’ll go,” she decided, every bit as serious and driven as he was. “You’re just a kid. I can’t let you go out into who knows what all on your own.”

“Like you’d do any better.”

This, predictably, from Kaedo, glaring at her from the other side of the copse. Apparently his definition of dealing with Sandy was to poke her occasionally with his boot to make sure she wasn’t dead, then less-than-subtly eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. Tripitaka, being disappointed but not surprised, merely rolled her eyes.

“You said I need to learn self-reliance,” she reminded him. “What better way to do that than through practical experience?”

“You’ll be vulnerable out there.” He drew himself up tall, but didn’t move away from his small charge. “Do you even know how to be stealthy? How to stay out of sight, cover your tracks, watch for your enemy’s?”

Tripitaka bristled, and made a point of not answering. “I’ll be fine,” she insisted. “We don’t even know if there really are any demons out there in the first place.”

“Demons move fast,” Kaedo shot back, as if she didn’t know that, as if she hadn’t spent the best part of a year dodging and ducking and hiding from them. “They’ll be out there. Have no doubt about that.”

Tripitaka bit down on the urge to retaliate, to turn this into an argument, to prove herself with words here in their safe little copse, rather than by action out there where it was dangerous and more needed.

It would do no good, she decided. Kaedo would not be convinced — perhaps rightly so — until she’d proven herself in action, by surviving, by fighting and winning.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, decisive now. “I’m the only adult here right now, and that means I’m in charge. If anyone’s going to stick their neck out to keep the others safe, it’s going to be me.” She looked around, taking in their ineffectual little hiding place, then fixed Kaedo and Pigsy with a sober, authoritative look. “You two stay here. Try to stay safe and out of trouble. Protect her—” She gestured at the balled-up Sandy, still silently shaking, then back at the two boys. “—and protect each other.”

Kaedo opened his mouth to protest, then shook his head and shut it again, clearly deeming it a fruitless effort.

“Whatever you say, boss,” he said instead, and heaved a heavy, dramatic sigh.

It wasn’t the first time one or another of her companions had called her that — _boss_ or _leader_ , usually playful — but it was quite possibly the first time she thought she might have earned it.

*

She took the scrolls with her, strapped to her back.

Kaedo advised her against it — “The noise will only make you more vulnerable,” he huffed, rolling his eyes like she was an idiot for not seeing that herself — but she ignored his warnings and took them anyway. For their sakes rather more than her own: if they were discovered in her absence, three unsupervised children all alone with neither Monkey nor monk anywhere to be found, at least there was a chance that the demons would deem them unworthy of attention if they had no scrolls either.

Monkey was recognisable, even as a child, thanks to the crown on his head and the ego that he couldn’t seem to shake off no matter his size. Tripitaka knew that her own face was known as well, her name whispered almost as often as Monkey’s in the towns and villages they passed through. Pigsy might have been known if he were grown, but his smaller pre-pubescent self so little resembled the timeworn older general that a demon might be forgiven for not seeing him at all.

Sandy, of course, was seldom recognised even when she was her older self. Hidden by choice or else mistakenly called a demon, either way she was an expert in not being seen for what she was. Tripitaka doubted her tiny self would be quite so talented at staying hidden, but she also doubted that any demons who found them would spare a thought for the scared, whimpering little toddler in their midst.

They would be safe.

At least, she hoped they would.

It was all she had to go on: hope. Hope, and the weight of the scrolls on her back, the weight of the fangkris in her hand and Kaedo’s lessons echoing in her head, reminding her to be self-reliant, to hold the little weapon like she meant it, to look the world and its demons right in the eye and make sure they knew that she was not afraid.

Confidence, surety: good lessons, both, if only she could convince them it was true.

But it wasn’t true. She was afraid, deeply and desperately, so much that the fear almost choked her. Who wouldn’t be afraid, a lone human in the forest, scouting for demons, with three children under her protection?

She wished Monkey would come back. Not to protect her, just so she could know he was all right. It kept playing itself out in her head, the betrayal on his face as he summoned his cloud, the wounded anger in his parting words: _“I’ll prove that you’re a liar!”_

She wanted to apologise to him. She wanted to make him understand, to explain things more clearly, more carefully, to show him the difference between the things he did and the god he would eventually grow into.

She wanted to apologise to Sandy too. Small, scared Sandy, believing herself abandoned years before it would happen in truth. She wanted to make her see that one day, many years later, she would be loved, that she would find a group of friends, a family so much better for her than the one she was weeping for now.

She wanted—

No.

She _focused_.

The forest was thriving, humming. Every whisper of wind ignited her blood, every rustle in the trees or grass set her nerves on fire. The fangkris, solid and steady in her hand, was perhaps the only part of her that wasn’t trembling. More than anything, she wanted to believe that Kaedo was overestimating the danger they were in, but her own experience with demons told her that, if anything, they were both underselling it.

The attack they were both so worried about? It was coming, and it was inevitable. This she knew as surely as she knew her own heartbeat, pounding in her ears like a drum, as surely as she knew each of her gods, whatever shape or age they might be.

It wasn’t a question of _if_ , it was a question of _when_ , and a question of whether she would be ready for it.

She breathed slowly, steadily, silently. She ran Kaedo’s lessons through her mind again and again and again, let them tether her and ground her and guide her. Holding her weapon like she meant it, Keeping her step light and her senses always reaching, not letting herself be tricked into thinking that ‘quiet’ ever meant ‘safe’.

She stuck to the trees. Eyes closed for the space of three breaths, sensing, feeling, scoping. Meditation, attunement to the world around her, the way she’d seen Monkey and Sandy do it when they were hunting prey or tracking demons like this. Three breaths, catching the shifts in the air, the susurrations in the grass, the clicking of insects and humming of birds in the trees. Three breaths, inhaling the breeze, its taste and smell, seeking out anything unnatural, anything that didn’t belong in the mulchy quiet of the forest.

Three breaths, then she opened her eyes again, looking around, seeking, searching, sensing.

Another few steps, keeping to the trees, sticking to the shadows thrown by bark and branches. Another few steps, then another few breaths, eyes closed, body in stillness.

Three breaths, three steps, three breaths, then again and again and again.

Prowling, hunting, stalking, mirroring what she remembered from them.

Circling, edging her way further and further from their hiding spot, the little copse that held her friends, her little charges. Circling, wider and wider, nerves lit up, again and again.

Again and again until she lost track of time, until she was certain it was all pointless, until—

Until the telltale _snap_ of a branch nearby informed her in no uncertain terms that it was not.

She froze.

Back pressed against the trunk of the nearest tree, she held her body as still as she could. Breath held, blood pounding in her ears, reaching out with all of her senses for the source of the sound. Gauging, judging, discerning, learning everything she could before she even tried to make a move; all three of her gods taught her that one, long before Kaedo and his lessons came along.

What she learned:

Boots, large and heavy, the leaves and grass crunching nosily underfoot as they approached. Breathing, just as heavy as the footsteps, the laboured rattle of exertion in a big chest.

Male, she gathered from the rasping husk of its breath. Demon, she could tell by the powerful weight of its step, too heavy to be a human and too confident to be a god in hiding.

Again, it appeared that Kaedo was right.

Fleet-footed and surprisingly swift for such a large body, he charged through the forest almost without making a sound. A demon she didn’t recognise, wearing the faceless indifference of a scout or foot soldier. What he lacked in subtlety he made up for in size and power; the way he moved, seemingly without thought, made her think of Davari’s sentinels, bound to his will by dark magic.

She wondered how many others of his kind were already swarming the forest right now, looking for them and for the scrolls, hunting and seeking with the blind focus of one with no mind or will of its own.

She shivered at the thought, then forced herself to grow still again, panic seizing her by the throat as his stride brought him closer, until he was nearly within touching distance, within striking distance, within—

He stopped.

Tripitaka held her breath, held the fangkris, held a thousand useless prayers under her tongue. _Don’t see me, don’t notice, don’t look, don’t think, don’t_ —

He turned.

She didn’t give him a chance to do more than that.

Her instincts, already honed and sharpened, already reminding her of Monkey’s and Pigsy’s and Sandy’s and Kaedo’s lessons, already preparing for this moment even before she fully realised it was happening, overtook her completely, body and mind and spirit.

She threw herself at him, moving before she’d even made the decision to do so, slashing with the fangkris, fumbling with her free hand for Sandy’s belt-knife, still tucked safely at her hip.

For the first time, she was grateful to young Monkey for making her confiscate the thing. Crude and small though it was, it was still another weapon, another good sharp blade at her disposal.

It made all the difference, and she didn’t even need to use it.

A glint of sunlight pierced the trees, angling off the dark metal of the knife. The glare was dazzling, a distraction for demon and human both, but Tripitaka did not depend upon having perfect eyesight the way her demon opponent did; she was fighting almost blind already and the momentary hindrance to her vision did little to slow or stagger her.

He, on the other hand, was dazed and disoriented; he reared back, and she took advantage without hesitation, surging forward like a wall of strength and force, like the earth thrown up by Pigsy’s rake or the lightning called down from the heavens, like the air cleaved in two by Monkey’s cloud, like cool water, graceful and untouchable under Sandy’s skin, like—

Like all three of them, working their powers through her.

She couldn’t say how well she fought. She couldn’t say how well he fought back, or even if he did at all. She could only say that she moved without thought, that she struck without aim, that she fought like her life — no, like _their_ lives, her gods, her friends, and right now her children — all depended on it. She couldn’t say if she was strong or if she was fast or if she was good.

The only thing she could say with surety was that the impact of of blade upon bone shuddered all through her.

Her blade, his bone.

That, and that alone, was what she knew.

Her blade—

Kaedo’s blade, the jagged edge of the fangkris buried deep in the demon’s chest. Poison forged from the teeth of dragons, a young boy’s weapon in the hands of a false monk, and her vision swam and blurred, anticipating the rush of blood that never came.

Did demons even bleed? She had no idea.

She’d only ever seen them turn to smoke.

As this one did.

A breath of air, a loosening of the pressure where she held the dagger, and the faintest _poof_ as he disappeared.

Nothing more, nothing less.

She didn’t allow herself even a moment to take it all in. Didn’t let herself think about the way the fangkris twisted, the resistance as she made contact and the way it dissolved less than a second later. Didn’t let herself think about, the hissing shriek of a demon in pain, there in one moment and then gone in the next, the transformation from matter to air, from body to spirit, from a living creature to nothing at all.

She couldn’t afford to think about any of that. She had more important things to think about: where there was one demon, there were surely others. She had to keep going, had to stay focused, had to think of the gods she was protecting.

She moved on.

Slipping back through the shadows, back the way she came, retracing her steps with greater care than before. Still watching, still listening, still alert; they were getting more frequent now, the flickers of motion between the trees, the crunch of leaves and earth, the squelch of mud and the snapping of twigs, the shifting shadows of bodies trying to stay hidden.

More of them, definitely.

Spectral figures slipping through the forest, creatures who knew how to stay out of sight, how to track and hunt and prey.

They were not the only ones who knew how do to those things.

Twice they passed close by. Twice they did not live to regret it.

Two more demons turned to dust, bitten by the teeth of dragons. Only one got the chance to land a counter-blow: Tripitaka reeled, a burst of black and red igniting behind her eyes, a bruise scorched across her temple where his weapon found a lucky mark. A blink, a shake of her head, and then the dizziness was gone, dismissed by force of will, by the certainty that she couldn’t afford to let it stick.

A blink, a shake of her head, and then he was gone too, turned to smoke and spirit to mingle with his dead brethren.

She’d expected it would feel heavier, the blood on her hands. But it only quickened her step, made her feel lighter.

Or perhaps that was just the panic, burning hotter with each demon she passed, hotter still with each one she slayed.

There were too many of them. It was only a matter of time before they closed in on their hiding place, before they scented gods or children or opportunity, before they were found and attacked, the three of them all alone.

She had to go back.

She had to—

A scream, high and horrible, cut through the forest quiet and clawed its way into her chest.

A child’s scream, full of pain and terror.

Tripitaka’s heart stopped, seized and seizing, paralysing her with something deeper than dread.

A scream, and then another, and she knew that pain, she knew that terror, she knew that _child_ —

Swallowing down a scream of her own, she broke into a run.

*


	8. Chapter 8

*

It was exactly as awful as she expected.

Tripitaka crashed through the trees and underbrush, no longer caring about stealth or subtlety or stalking her prey, no longer caring about anything at all, only getting back to the sheltered copse where her friends were hiding, the only possible place in this endless, labyrinthine mess of a forest where such a terrible scream could have come from.

It was _exactly_ as awful as she expected.

A trio of demons had Kaedo cornered, kept in place at the point of three sharp blades. No fear on his face, only anger and a seething determination, still he had the self-preservation to know when he was outnumbered; he held himself still and docile, sensibly deferring to the greater number of weapons, and didn’t try anything.

Pigsy, on his knees and unarmed, was at the mercy of another two demons. One, tall and broad, towered over him with both hands on his shoulders, the gesture seemingly meant to intimidate the poor boy rather than to try and hold him down; the other had confiscated his rake and was twirling it carelessly between her hands, like it was nothing more than the gardening tool it resembled.

And Sandy...

If there had been any doubt in Tripitaka’s mind that the toddler had been the source of that horrible scream, it vanished now, at the sight of her dangling in the careless one-handed grip of a demon.

She recognised him immediately, the eyepatch-wearing general who had assaulted her after the Jade Mountain. Kimura One-Eye, a fitting name that she suspected his fellow demons found hilarious.

There was nothing hilarious about it now. Not the name, and certainly not the demon who wore it. He was gripping Sandy tightly by the back of her tunic, not caring that she was weak and human, not caring that he was frightening and possibly hurting her; in typical demon fashion, all he saw in the child was leverage, a tool for manipulation, suspended like a trinket over the others’ heads.

“I’ll ask you one last time, you little pest,” he snarled at Kaedo, lip curling, eye flashing. “Where’s the monk with the scrolls?”

Kaedo bared his teeth, no doubt readying another in a doubtlessly extensive list of insults, quips, and ill-advised retaliations.

Tripitaka, tearing into the copse like her boots were on fire, didn’t give him the chance.

“Put her down!”

Fangkris in one hand, knife in the other, she charged in as if she knew no fear. Never mind that her heart was threatening to beat its way out of her chest, never mind that she was nearly as frightened as Sandy, never mind that she was outnumbered, outmanoeuvred, and thoroughly outmatched. Never mind that she was only a human and they demons, that she had only children to back her up, equally outmatched, equally frightened.

Never mind any of that. Just like Kaedo had taught her, she held her weapons like she knew how to use them, like she meant it, and she spoke with the unwavering confidence of a god unafraid of mortality.

She didn’t know if it worked, but it certainly got his attention. In less than the time it took to draw a breath, Kaedo and Pigsy were entirely forgotten as Kimura One-Eye locked his gaze on her; recognition flashed in his eye as he saw her face, her robes, and the scroll-case on her back, and that was all it took to have his undivided focus.

A smile twisted his lips, calculating and clever, and he tightened his grip on the squirming, struggling toddler.

“You know how these games go,” he said to Tripitaka, with the lazy carelessness of one who had played this one more times than any human could hope to count. “The scrolls for the little one. Hand ’em over nice and easy, and she’s all yours. Try anything funny, and...”

He gave Sandy a quick, pointed shake. Sandy squeaked in fear and pain, but she did not burst into tears, only kicked and flailed and lashed out with her tiny fists. Futile, certainly, against a demon ten times her size, but still Tripitaka drew a little comfort from the sight; however many countless ways this Sandy was unlike her own, at least her survival instincts were still very much intact.

Watching them closely, demon and toddler both, Tripitaka inched a few steps closer. “You’d really hurt an infant?”

“Infant, my ass.” His laughter was as crude as his language; on his knees, Pigsy flinched. “Got teeth, this one.”

“Literally,” Kaedo piped up cheerfully. “She bit him.”

Tripitaka choked down a giggle. “Good girl, Sandy!”

Alas, having been the victim of said mistreatment, their demon host was not quite so easily amused. He gave Sandy another rough shake, seemingly just to be mean, and held out his free hand in a combined threat and invitation. “The scrolls, monk.”

Tripitaka said nothing, but she did take the opportunity to move closer.

Another step, and then another, and then another. Slowly, excruciatingly, and with a great force of will. She kept her gaze fixed on her target, blocked out the other demons and the other children, the less immediate dangers, the least helpless among them. Kaedo’s smirk told her that he was unafraid, that he could take care of himself, and Pigsy...

_Pigsy_.

She waited for an opening, a moment when Kimura One-Eye was occupied in wrestling with the disobedient Sandy, then she changed the briefest glance at the kneeling god. Slyly, sneakily, carefully, but still taking in every detail: his position, his expression, the demon next to him holding his rake, the one behind him holding his shoulders. Loose grip, careless and casual, the other one twirling and toying with the weapon as if there was nothing special about it at all, as if it were nothing more than a human’s worthless tool.

As if _he_ were nothing more than...

He caught her eye. A glimmer of light, of recognition, and then, yes, the barest flicker of a nod. Communication, as much as they could get away with while there were demons all around them.

It was enough.

He was shaking, shivering, scared, shifting uncomfortably on his knees; the moment Tripitaka turned away he ducked his head, deferring to the demons above him as if they really were his betters. Self-conscious and shamefaced and shy, he looked so weak and small, so much like a human child, she could hardly blame them for assuming that he was one of them, harmless and helpless and—

_Human_

Like her, like Kaedo. Like Sandy, too, in her little toddler’s body.

An easy mistake. With any luck, one that would cost them dearly.

Shifting the scroll-case on her shoulder, Tripitaka turned her full attention back to Kimura One-Eye. “Put the child down first,” she ordered him, inching closer still; fangkris in hand, locking both her eyes on his one, she let him know with every molecule in her body that she was not afraid of him now as she had been at the Jade Mountain. “I’m not giving you anything until she’s safe and out of your reach.”

He barked another laugh. Colder this time, more cutting. “And leave myself defenceless? Do I look stupid?”

Tripitaka politely refrained from answering that. “We’re human,” she pointed out instead, quietly emphasising the plural without looking at Pigsy. “I’m on the holy path and they’re only children. Are you really so afraid of three children and a peace-loving monk?”

“Peace-loving.” He spat the word like a curse, cocking his head at the fangkris. “You think I don’t know what that thing is?” Then, rather more seriously as he looked her in the eye, “Or what sorts of things ‘peace-loving monks’ like yourself are capable of?”

Spoken from experience, or so it seemed.

Tripitaka didn’t want think about the implications of that, what it meant for the order of holy men and women she’d grown up with, the desperate measures they might have been forced to take against demons like him, the darker side of even the lightest souls that she — sheltered and protected as she was by the Scholar — had never seen.

How much had he really kept from her, she wondered. What dark deeds had he and his fellow monks been forced to do in the name of protection, of guardianship, of duty?

She didn’t let herself think about it.

Demons, she reminded herself, always trying to twist their victims’ heads. Just like Lady Tsumori, twisting Sandy’s self-doubts until she truly believed they were the same.

She took a deep breath, let it out slow and careful, and focused.

“I’m not going to try anything,” she said, swallowing down the last of her dark thoughts, strengthening her voice and her body. “Not while your minions still have my other fr— _children_ at their mercy.” She forced a sneer, shaky but there, to match his. “I’m not stupid either: we both know you’d have them struck down before I could even raise my weapon.”

“Hmph.” The derision on his face made it clear that, so far as he was concerned, the ‘not stupid’ part was highly debatable. Still, it was enough that he hesitated, glancing from the fangkris to Tripitaka’s face as though to gauge her sincerity, then back to Sandy still squirming and struggling in his grasp. “And you’ll hand over the scrolls like a good little human, as soon as your precious spawn is loose?”

Tripitaka cut a quick, careful glance over her shoulder, pretending to examine the scroll-case, the leather sling and the sacred relics stashed therein. The movement brought her face back into Pigsy’s line of vision, allowing them a brief but meaningful exchange, unobserved by their demon captors: her inquiring and him responding, communication by necessity without words.

He was completely and utterly terrified. She didn’t need to know him as well as she did to see that; it was written all over his face. The Pigsy she knew might have grown up into a moderately talented actor, but his younger self lacked his later talents for masking his face: he wore his oversized heart on his equally oversized sleeve, right there for all to see.

He wasn’t the helpless, weak little human his captors thought he was, true, but that didn’t mean he was ready for any of this. Even with all the strength and power of a god flowing through his veins, he would be the first to admit that he was not cut out for this kind of combat.

He certainly wasn’t cut out for holding all of their survival in his young, nervous hands.

But it was what it was: Tripitaka was not without some moderate talent of her own — three dead demons dusting the forest floor with their remains had made that clear — but even she couldn’t take on this many enemies alone. Even if Kaedo managed to break free and help, they were both human in truth. Even if they were both twice as talented, three times as well-armed as they were, they would be struck down in a heartbeat, and that if they were lucky.

Kaedo must have realised this just as well as she did, because he hadn’t yet tried anything.

And Pigsy, quivering with fear, so young and so unwilling to use his power, certainly knew it.

Whether he liked it or not — whether any of them did — he was their only real chance. Just a boy, and a pacifist at that, but he alone had the strength and power to make a fight out of this. He knew it, and the gleam in his eye, terror smothered by determination, told her that he was willing, if not exactly eager, to do what had to be done.

At last, she thought: a glimmer of the Pigsy she knew.

None of the decadence, not yet the warmth and humour that had given them light even on the darkest nights, none of the things that would take him centuries to cultivate and become. None of that, not here and not yet, but a hint just the same of that big-hearted loyalty she knew so well, the quiet courage — all the more powerful because it always seemed to come on the heels of such crippling fear — that had saved them all more times than they could count.

All of this, they communicated in a fraction of a second. They couldn’t afford any longer.

Keeping the fangkris in hand, Tripitaka slipped Sandy’s knife back onto her belt; a necessary concession to take the scrolls in hand. A necessary concession, too, in letting them see her surrender one of her weapons.

Kimura One-Eye watched her every move. He watched her shoulders as she shrugged off the scroll-case, he watched her fingers as she took it in hand. He watched her face, he watched her step, he watched her breath.

He watched her, and nobody else.

His minions were watching her too, their prisoners almost entirely forgotten in the charged tension of the moment.

_Good_ , she thought, inching closer.

“Put her down,” she said again, firmer now. “Put her down, let her come to me, and the scrolls are yours.”

He studied her, studied the scrolls in her hand, the fangkris in the other. She could see him weighing up his options, debating the likelihood of success if he simply lunged at her and snatched the scrolls out of her hand before she had a chance to retaliate. She was close enough, and with the edge given to him by his demon’s speed, she had no doubt that he would have made the attempt, if not for his own burden, kicking and fighting against his grip.

He couldn’t attack Tripitaka while he was still weighed down with Sandy.

More than anything else, she suspected, that would be what swayed him.

Though she was scrawny and light, Sandy struggled and wriggled like a dozen heavier children; she provided cover and leverage, yes, but but nothing more. If Kimura One-Eye wanted to do the dishonourable thing and go for the scrolls by force, the burden would neuter what advantage he had. It was in his best interest to play along, just as much as it was in Tripitaka’s, and he knew it just as well as she did.

Still, he was a demon, and there were few things demons hated more than having to negotiate with a human.

He did it, yes, but with reluctance, and the hatred that seethed in his eye as he released his grip and let Sandy fall to the ground made Tripitaka’s blood run cold; a demon outsmarted, forced to concede. He hated her for that, even more furiously than he hated her already for having escaped his capture back at the Jade Mountain.

There was no doubt in her mind that he would rip her to pieces without hesitation if he got even the slightest opening.

She didn’t let herself think about that. He wouldn’t get that opening; she wouldn’t give him the chance to try.

She watched as Sandy hit the ground, the soft earth cushioning the impact only a little. Such a drop would have startled anyone her age into a tearful explosion, Tripitaka thought, but for once Sandy remained silent and almost entirely dry-eyed.

Unnervingly so.

Tripitaka pushed her unease to the side, willed herself to think only of the present, of the urgent need to get the dazed, shell-shocked toddler out of the line of fire.

“Sandy.” She kept her voice low, dropping into a clumsy half-crouch to try and communicate on the child’s level. “Sandy, come to me. Come over here, okay?”

Sandy blinked at her, then looked up at the demon towering over her head. “Don’t want to,” she mumbled, not really at either one of them. “Want to be _alone_.”

Just like her Sandy, Tripitaka thought sadly: retreating inside herself when she was upset or in pain, hiding herself and her vulnerable places where even her closest friends couldn’t find them. In another situation, it might break her heart a little, but she had much more important things to think about right now.

“I know you do,” she said, willing her voice to capture a patience she didn’t feel. “But that’s not an option right now, okay? If you don’t come over here, that demon will hurt you.”

She didn’t need to see the devastated look on Sandy’s small face to know what she was thinking: _you hurt me already, everyone always does, so why does it matter if he does it too?_ It was the same look she saw on her Sandy back at the village, surrounded by angry parents and frightened children, a small world that smelled of her childhood, of fish and poverty and hunger, and a population that hated and feared her.

Tripitaka felt paralysed. Empathy clashed with urgency, the need to get the numb toddler to safety colliding with the part of her still stricken with guilt, the part that knew she was the reason for Sandy’s reticence in showing trust. She didn’t know what to say, what to do; she only knew that everything rested on her shoulders, that she needed to show self-reliance now more than ever, that she needed to—

“Um... excuse me?”

_Pigsy_.

Still held in place by his own captors, he was looking up now, watching the exchange with clever, curious eyes. Tripitaka saw the faint light gleaming behind them, the flicker of opportunity and optimism, and she saw just as well the way his hands were shaking, the stiffness tightening his shoulders, the sickly pale cast of his face. He was paralysed too, pinned far more effectively by his own fear than by the demon’s hands, but courage thickened his voice and made him sound as strong and confident as he would one day become.

Kimura One-Eye, clearly bored with the whole affair, barely spared him a glance. “What is it now, boy?”

Pigsy swallowed nervously, queasily, then raised a shaking hand to gently pry his captor’s fingers away from his shoulders. “If you’d let me, ah... that is, I think I can help?” His eyes fell on Sandy, sitting numb and miserable at the demon’s feet, and added, “You miss your friend, huh? Your little fishy?”

Sandy’s eyes lit up at that, the phantoms of fear and pain vanishing as though swallowed by the sun.

“Fishy!” she squealed with a flicker of real warmth, then immediately grew withdrawn again. “Please?”

Pigsy looked up at his captors. “Let me give the kid her toy back,” he said, with calculated deference. “I won’t touch anything else or try anything stupid, I promise. I just want to help.”

He really meant that. Perhaps more deeply than the demons realised, but Tripitaka could see that it was true. It was all he wanted, probably all he’d ever wanted at this point in his life: simply to be helpful, to be useful, to be good enough for those who watched over him. To make a small child less scared, to stop a worried, out-of-her-depth human from having to take on a forest full of demons all by herself. To do whatever it took, no matter the personal cost, to make the lives of other people less unpleasant.

Not for the first time, Tripitaka wanted to hug him.

She was not the only one taken in by his honesty. His captors, taking their cues from their leader, stepped back and gestured at him to stand. Kimura One-Eye, suspicious but not threatened, cocked his head and grunted his permission.

“Make it quick,” he ordered. “I don’t have all day.”

Pigsy nodded his obedience, face angled once more at the ground. None of the demons noticed, as Tripitaka certainly noticed, that his eyes were not on the grass but on the haft of his rake, still hanging loose and half-forgotten in his demon captor’s hand.

He made no move towards it, no attempt to take it back; on the surface he gave no sign that he’d even given the weapon a moment’s thought.

Not yet.

Instead, focusing in on the more immediate situation, he did only what he’d said he would, crossing over to where Sandy’s toy fish lay discarded in the nearby dirt. He took the thing up and dusted it down with great care, still keeping his head down and his eyes hidden in shadow, then gently, carefully tossed it at Tripitaka.

Both hands being occupied, Tripitaka fumbled, but it didn’t matter. The toy was with her, and so too was the attention of everyone that mattered: the five demon nobodies, their fearless leader, and the toddler at his feet.

“Mine!” she cried, anger darkening her little face. “Don’t touch! _Mine_!”

Tripitaka let the toy rest untouched at her feet. “She’s right here,” she coaxed, gentle but with some urgency. “Come and get her.”

It worked. Sandy whined irritably, then scrambled up onto her feet and tripped her clumsy, hasty way over to Tripitaka’s side.

“Stupid,” she grumbled when she got there, flopping down sulkily at her feet and taking her precious fish into her arms. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

Quite possibly so, but the important part was that she was safe, and well out of the reach of Kimura One-Eye and his minions.

The fangkris trembled ever so slightly in Tripitaka’s hand as she stepped carefully over Sandy’s body and resumed her approach. One eye on Sandy, safely behind her, sheltered now and protected, the other on Pigsy as he crept his slow way back to his captors, the demon who looked like he was itching to throw him back down again and the other, more important one, still toying with his rake, with no idea what was coming for her.

Kimura One-Eye, caring only about Tripitaka and the scrolls, snarled, “Well, monk? What are you waiting for?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Tripitaka saw Pigsy’s fist clench at his side. His head, still angled towards the ground, twitched almost imperceptibly in a nervous but determined nod.

Tripitaka looked Kimura right in his one eye, smiled, and said, “Nothing at all.”

And as Pigsy launched himself with all his young god’s strength at the demon holding his rake, she followed his lead and lunged at Kimura One-Eye, lashing out with the fangkris.

She didn’t hold back, didn’t hesitate, didn’t allow herself even a moment to think at all.

She went straight for his face, aiming to draw blood or do worse with the poison in the blade, aiming to take him out just as ruthlessly as he would have taken her back at Jade Mountain, just as ruthlessly as he would have hurt a small child if she hadn’t intervened, just as ruthlessly as he would have snatched the scrolls and ended all four of their lives without remorse, without compassion, without sparing even a thought for the children and humans he’d laid to waste.

He would have shown her no mercy; why should she show him any, simply because she wore the robes of a monk?

Behind her, she heard the crack of impact, leather on leather and bone on bone, as Kaedo took advantage of the ruckus to turn on his own captors.

“It’s about time!” he crowed, laughing as he spun to engage and join the fray.

Tripitaka bit down on the urge to turn around and check on him. Every nerve in her body wanted to make sure the boy wasn’t out of his depth, unarmed as he was, but she knew better than to let herself get distracted before her own enemy was on the ground; she may not be the expert in self-reliance that Kaedo wanted, but she knew enough to know that.

And she knew, too, from their few clashes in combat and sparring, that Kaedo was perfectly capable of handling himself in a scrap. If she turned around now, and gave up her own advantage for his sake, she knew he’d never let her hear the end of it.

So she didn’t.

She pressed forward, as she knew he would tell her to, ducking and darting around the demon as he recovered his senses, swinging the fangkris like the deadly, poison-tipped thing it was. She didn’t need to make contact, she knew; she just needed him to be afraid enough to leap back, to leap back, to leap—

_Back_.

His shoulders slammed into a tree-trunk; stunned, his legs went out from under him. He lashed out as he went down, as blind and helpless as she had felt back at the Jade Mountain, scrabbling and struggling under him as he’d reached for the scrolls. She held the fangkris between them, a threat and a warning: _stay there, don’t make any sudden moves_.

It was disorienting, to hold another’s life in her hand.

Different, and not necessarily in a good way, to the mindless charge, the thoughtless adrenaline of slaying the demons in the forest: no time for reaction then, no time to process, she’d done what was needed and moved on. It was not something she was able to do now, and so she had to hold her thoughts down by force, lest they rise up and drown her before her demon prey got the chance to do the same.

Some ways to her right, a bolt of lightning scorched the earth, electric-green and deadly. A shout, a groan, and she allowed herself the briefest backwards glance, proud and awed by the sight of Pigsy standing strong, rake in his hand, glowing and gleaming and vividly powerful; he looked stricken, horrified by the impossible power at his fingertips, but he didn’t let his horror pull him back down.

Feeling overwhelmed, Tripitaka forced her attention back to Kimura One-Eye, recovering his balance all too quickly. She moved in, pressing her advantage, letting the serrated edges of the blade come close to the skin of his neck.

“Stand down,” she ordered.

His eye flickered, taking in the blade, her hand, her face, her body, and her size, taking in every part of her in what seemed to be less than a blink. Gauging his chances of survival, maybe gauging her willingness to draw blood too; no doubt he assumed her robes made her softer than she really was.

“You don’t have it in you,” he sneered, all but confirming it.

Tripitaka held her ground. “I killed three of your kind in that forest,” she told him, keeping her voice steely and her eyes like iron. “I wouldn’t think twice about making it four.”

If he was surprised, he didn’t let it show. He hummed, as though taking in her words, and his gaze lingered for a beat on her hands, as though seeking the blood she claimed to have already spilled. He must surely know that he would find nothing tangible there — no trace left of his former friends, just the smoke and dust of their spirits as they faded — but still he looked, assessing, sizing her up.

Let him size her up all he wanted, Tripitaka thought. As long as he was trying to figure her out, he wasn’t trying to—

He lunged.

A demon’s quickness, both of mind and body: too fast, he’d figured out everything he needed to get the upper hand. Fingers locked around her wrist, twisting painfully until her fist cracked open, until the fangkris fell uselessly to the ground. The other hand balled in her scarf, hauling her up and then shoving her back and back, and then it was him looming over her, looming, lunging, reaching for the scrolls—

Abandoning the fangkris, her only useful weapon against a demon, Tripitaka scrambled backwards and out of his reach. The scrolls were more important: more important than the weapon, more important than her pride, more important than her life, if that was the choice it came down to. She held them close, clutched the scroll-case to her chest, and lurched back as fast and as far back from him as she could get.

Not far enough. Kimura One-Eye might be short by demon standards, but Tripitaka was short by human standards as well; what little space she was able to put between them he had closed in less than two strides.

He took the scrolls by force, tearing them out of her hands with the same violence he’d used back at the Jade Mountain, ruthless and efficient as she stumbled and hit the ground, helpless and exposed, unable to do anything but watch and raise her arms as he brought up his other hand in a fist: demon power shimmering on the air: _this is what you get, human, for imagining you could outwit one of us!_

With nowhere left to go, nothing to do but brace her body for the blow, she looked up, met his eye, and did not flinch. Defiant, acceptant, dignified as a god, resilient as a human, unafraid as a—

A shriek of lightning, close enough to singe her hair, hurtling past her and slamming straight into his chest.

Dazed and halfway blind, Tripitaka reacted instinctively, throwing herself away from the demon, the lightning, away from everything that could get its burning, dangerous claws into her. Far enough away that she could lift her head and squint, dizzied and disoriented as Pigsy — young Pigsy, shy Pigsy, the self-conscious little boy who couldn’t bear the thought of raising his hand against anything — stepped into the space where her head had been only a moment before.

Boots digging into the soft earth, holding the weight of his body, the weight of his determination. The weight of his rake as well, raised to the sky, calling down thunder and lightning, danger and destruction and death to demons.

Tripitaka watched, awed, as he slowly lowered the crackling weapon from the sky to the earth, as he pointed its prongs right at the demon’s face. Eyes hard, face set, showing no sign of weakness or fear or hesitation; no-one, not even an arrogant one-eyed demon could possibly mistake him now for anything other than the god he was.

“It’s not nice to do harm to humans,” Pigsy said, in a voice as strong as his posture. Then, with a too-quick glance at the scroll-case hanging limp in the demon’s hand, “Not nice to steal from them either.”

Sprawled out flat on his back, still crackling a little from the blast, Kimura One-Eye sneered. “Not nice to pretend you’re just a harmless human, either,” he retorted, turning his head to spit his disgust into the dirt. “God-whelp.”

A low, dangerous sound rumbled in Pigsy’s chest. It was the first time Tripitaka had seen him really, truly angry since he and the other gods were de-aged, and the sight of it chilled her to the bone. Even her Pigsy, fully grown and with a dozen lifetimes of cold, hard experience under his belt, was slow to anger, and this miniature version of him had, until now, been slower by far. A pacifist, Kaedo had called him, and the name certainly seemed to fit.

Until now.

Now, bending without fear to reclaim two sacred scrolls from a ruthless, bloodthirsty demon, he seemed to buzz and crackle with almost as much power as the prongs of his rake.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, and the low, unassuming hum of his voice only made the words all the more terrifying. “But I will if you try to hurt me or any of my friends.”

Kimura One-Eye was watching the rake, not the boy holding it. A smart move, Tripitaka conceded; Pigsy may be the weapon’s master, but anyone could see that the rake itself was by far the bigger threat; the slightest shift in either of them, intentional or otherwise, and he would be fried to a crisp before he could even try to think up his next rejoinder.

Breathing hard, Tripitaka looked around. Only one of the other five demons still remained, and even he was well and truly subdued by now, with his face pressed to the ground and Kaedo’s boot pressed to his back; the others had either fled at the first manifestation of Pigsy’s true nature, or simply been obliterated by the rake’s power. Either way, Tripitaka would not shed a tear for them: any creature who would hold their weapons to a child’s neck, human or otherwise, was a monster indeed.

Only the leader to worry about now, then, and he subdued too, for all his bravado.

She tried to let out her breath, tried to loosen her shoulders, but nothing happened.

A low growl from Kimura One-Eye, no doubt realising as well that he was alone and now outnumbered. A monk, yes, and two children, but one of them a god and the other competent enough to have take out his followers. Demon or not, anybody with brains enough to command authority would recognise this as a lost cause.

And so he did, though not without venting his anger. He spat one more time on the ground at Pigsy’s feet and gritted out, “Well, then, let me up, boy!”

The intended insult missed its mark. Not lowering his rake, Pigsy only nodded and stepped back, granting the demon room to stagger back to his feet.

“Think I prefer ‘boy’ to ‘god-whelp’,” he mused, as if that were the only point worth noting in all this. “Now go. Leave us in peace, while you still can.”

Just like at the Jade Mountain — another rescue, Tripitaka thought sadly, from another of her gods — Kimura One-Eye needed no further prompting. He let his gaze linger on the rake for one last long moment, then spun on his heels and fled, snarling futile, pointless curses over his shoulder as he went.

Pigsy, having far greater courage than either version of himself would ever take credit for, waited until he was gone and they were safe before letting his legs give way beneath him.

The electricity still thrumming on the prongs of his rake sputtered and died, as though reacting to its master’s mood, and as it fell from his numb grasp it became only a rake again, lying harmless and useless in the grass.

Though every instinct in her body told her to go to him, Tripitaka reined herself in and took a beat to look around, checking again that the coast really was clear, that they were safe, that she could let her guard down.

Sandy, the most vulnerable and thus the one most in need of checking over, hadn’t moved at all. She sat in the grass where Tripitaka had left her, curled around her toy fish and whimpering quietly to herself. She was clearly in shock, sporting a small graze on her cheek and no doubt a few bumps and bruises elsewhere, but seemed otherwise unharmed.

Recalling their previous interactions, Tripitaka suspected that her presence would bring Sandy no comfort and perhaps a great deal of distress, so she cast a hopeful glance at Kaedo instead, silently pleading with him to deal with her.

He nodded, getting the message, and gave his demon captive a savage kick. “Naptime’s over,” he told him, with a cold, sharp authority that sat at odds to his youthful appearance. “Get out of our sight before we get really cranky.”

Though he must surely have known he could put up a fight if he really wanted to, the demon chose instead to follow in the footsteps of his not-so-fearless leader. He limped back up to his feet, grunting and groaning and generally making a scene, then turned on his heels and fled into the brush without so much as a word.

Kaedo waited until all trace of him was gone, until the trees and underbrush had grown silent again and even the air seemed still and calm. Only then did he turn his attention to Sandy.

Tripitaka watched only until he was at her side, crouched in front of her and speaking gently. A strange thing to see, gentleness coming from Kaedo, but it was enough to know that the toddler was in safe hands, and that his approach hadn’t caused her to burst into tears. Let him look her over with relative privacy; she seemed more responsive to him, anyway.

Besides, Tripitaka had another young, shell-shocked god to tend to.

Pigsy hadn’t moved either. On his knees where he’d fallen, he was staring blindly at nothing at all; Tripitaka couldn’t make out his expression, couldn’t figure out whether the twitching of his mouth was horror at the violence he’d been forced to threaten and the power he’d found suddenly at his fingertips, or relief that he’d done so well, that no-one was injured, that the demons had fled and they were safe and he was the reason why.

Tripitaka didn’t wait for an invitation before moving to sit down at his side; somehow, she could tell that she wouldn’t need one. “Are you okay?”

He swallowed thickly, audibly. It seemed to take him a great deal of effort to lift his head and meet her gaze, but when he did she was relieved to find his eyes clear and comprehending.

“I think so,” he said, sounding centuries older than he currently was. Then, with a touch more surety, “Yeah.”

Tripitaka reached out to squeeze his shoulder, letting him find in the contact all the confidence and gratitude and warmth she felt for him right then. “You did well, Pigsy. You saved all of us.”

Herself included.

Even after she’d named herself their protector and guardian, even after she’d insisted, both to Kaedo and to herself, that she was capable of self-reliance, that she was tough enough to do whatever was needed to keep everyone safe. Even after she’d sworn that she was up to the task of keeping three god children safe, sworn that she didn’t need their protection, sworn that she was more than Kaedo had seen in her back at the village.

Even after all that, she who was fully grown, she who had a deadly, poison-tipped fangkris at her disposal, she who had slain three demons in her rush to get back to them... even then, it had been Pigsy who had saved them all.

He was only a boy, as afraid of violence as any human child would be, and she had wanted so badly to protect him from this, to give him a moment where he didn’t have to fight, didn’t have to prove his worth, didn’t have to do anything at all but be what he was.

Just a moment, brief and fleeting and perhaps not even real, where he was free to be a child, free to be safe and taken care of, without having to bend his still-growing back to meet the world’s unrealistic expectations.

But she couldn’t even give him that.

Kaedo would have a lot to say about this, she was sure, once things were back to normal. And he would be right: if she couldn’t even rely on herself when her gods were children, if she couldn’t even protect the sacred scrolls from a third-rate demon without needing their help, what chance would she have if she was truly alone?

Pigsy, meanwhile, was smiling. Shaky and watery, clearly more for her sake than his own, still it spoke well that he’d managed one. “Guess I did, at that, didn’t I?”

“Yeah.” Tripitaka couldn’t seem to find a smile of her own. She squeezed his shoulder a little more tightly, letting him feel the tremors under her skin, the human weakness that she was so ashamed of. “Thank you.”

He nodded, then ducked his head as he often did when he became self-conscious. He studied her hand for a beat, small and light on his broad shoulder, then looked down at the rest of his body. His weight, his size, his pre-adolescent awkwardness, all of him; he examined every inch of his young, still-growing body like he’d never seen it before. Like he was seeing, possibly for the first time in his life, some part of himself that was worthwhile.

“Sure,” he said, as though speaking to himself. Then, bending forward a little, as though to pick up his rake, “Guess there’s something to be said for me being a god, after all.”

Tripitaka thought of her Pigsy, older and more comfortable. She thought of Monkey and Sandy, of all three of them as she knew them: full-grown, confident, powerful. Her protectors, always there, even when she tried to take care of herself, even when she tried to practice self-reliance and self-defence and self-empowerment, even when she swore she did not need them or want them: still, they were always there.

She thought of Pigsy’s smile, the way he would hum to himself when he cooked their breakfast or foraged for lunch, the way he would readily face down whatever challenges came at him, no matter how much he hated them, no matter how much they upset or exhausted or frightened him.

She thought of Monkey’s restlessness, his arrogance, and his pride; she thought of the way he saved her from Kimura One-Eye at the Jade Mountain, the way he threw himself off the top of the palace to rescue her, all the ways he would do the same for any one of them — risk his dignity, his pride, even his life without hesitation — and then laugh and deny that he cared about them at all.

She thought of Sandy’s devotion, her loyalty, her quiet obedience; she thought of her confusion, her pain, all the terrible parts of herself she kept hidden and buried and tucked out of sight, the deep, festering wounds she had lived with for so long and did not know how to stitch up.

She thought of them all, her gods, the strength in their bodies and all the power in their hearts, all the big and small ways they had all become so important to her. She thought of how much they meant to her, how desperately she loved them, and she looked at Pigsy — this Pigsy, young and shy, who wanted none of this — and for him she found a smile.

“Yeah,” she said, with all the softness and reverence the affirmation deserved. “There’s a lot to be said for you being a god.”

Pigsy chuckled wanly, then lifted his head to meet her gaze. There was warmth in his eyes now, real and honest and true, and for the first time since she met this younger, self-conscious version of him, Tripitaka thought that he almost looked comfortable in his own skin.

“Thanks,” he whispered.

Tripitaka opened her mouth to reply, to offer encouragement or compassion or anything at all, but she didn’t get the chance: no sooner was the word out of his mouth than he doubled over, gasping and clutching at his chest as though wracked with some sudden, unimaginable pain.

“Pigsy?” Her voice pitched sharply, breathless as the fear leaped once again to the surface. “Are you okay?”

Had he taken a blow during his scuffle with his captors? She had no idea; she’d been so busy dealing with Kimura One-Eye she hadn’t been paying attention. He was a god, she’d told herself; he didn’t need her help.

A dangerous presumption, she realised now, too late to go back. Was Kaedo hurt too? Was Sandy? Was—

“I’m good.” His voice was tight, but not high with panic like hers. Rasping and hoarse, it sounded like he was struggling mightily to get the sound past his throat. “I’m good, I’m just... I...”

That was as far as he got. He gasped one more time, then slumped forward, seizing and shuddering and—

Shimmering?

Tripitaka’s heart leaped into her mouth, horror mingling with an inexplicable fluttering of hope; even from her short distance she could feel the thrum of power, of _magic_ engulfing him. She didn’t know, couldn’t be sure, but she prayed, with every ounce of faith the Scholar had instilled in her, that it meant what she so desperately wanted it to mean.

Pigsy was writhing, wreathed in a kind of living flame, faint and heatless but inescapable. Tripitaka watched with her mouth hanging open, her nails digging painfully into her palms, praying and praying and praying as his body seemed to bend and twist, glowing and glowing and—

_Growing_.

Her breath stopped, and her heart with it. For a moment that seemed to last an eternity, the whole world seemed to stop as well.

And then—

And then _it_ stopped.

The glowing, the growing, the shimmer of magic, all of it.

Stopped.

Pigsy coughed, spluttering and deep-voiced and familiar, so familiar, so _familiar_. 

He rolled over onto his back, and Tripitaka leaned over him, blinking down into his old familiar face, his _old_ familiar face, and she—

She couldn’t help herself.

Like the child he was only a moment ago, like the child Sandy still was, safe and sound in Kaedo’s care, the child Monkey was, out there somewhere in the great unknown, just like a child, she burst into tears.

Pigsy looked up at her, himself and himself and _himself_ , bemused and befuddled, his comical confusion so familiar and so wonderful it made her start to cry again, and he sat up, tugging at the ripped fabric of his too-small clothes, his younger self’s outfit torn to pieces by so much sudden growth, and he said, in his familiar old voice, all rich and warm and deep and perfect and _him_ —

“What in the seven bloody hells is going on?”

*


	9. Chapter 9

*

All things considered, Pigsy’s befuddlement was completely understandable.

Anyone with even the slightest iota of common sense would realise that he’d just come around in a new place, wearing the shredded remains of clothes clearly made for a child, to the hysterical sobbing of his human friend and companion. They would use that common sense to take a step back, take a deep breath, and give him all the room he needed to process this strange and unexpected turn of events.

Unfortunately, Tripitaka had given up all hope of common sense long before now.

Pigsy took it in his usual generous stride when she threw herself at him, barrelling into his chest and throwing her arms around him, soaking his chest with another flood of tears. A little uneasy, a little awkward, he nonetheless returned the hug and patted her back, humming and chuckling to himself, like this wasn’t even in the top ten weirdest things that had happened to him in the last few minutes.

Which, in truth, it most likely wasn’t. 

Tripitaka was grateful. She knew she must look like a mess, knew that her behaviour must seem dramatic and completely ridiculous, but she couldn’t bring herself to care: Pigsy was himself again, and she was no longer the only adult in a sea of confused and vulnerable children.

“I’m so glad you’re back,” she choked into his broad, mostly-bare chest.

“Uh.” He patted her back again, coughing lightly. “That’s nice. Me too?”

Tripitaka laughed, high and a little crazed, then pulled back to take a look at him. “Wait. _How_ are you back?”

“Don’t ask me.” His smile wavered, confusion overpowering the warmth. “Didn’t even know I’d been away.”

Tripitaka tried to laugh again, but this time the sound got caught somewhere between her chest and her throat; it came out like a choke, clogged and raw, and it made her feel embarrassed and helpless all over again.

“You weren’t,” she squeaked, when she was able to dislodge her voice. “Or, well, not exactly. You were kind of... um, you know, it’s a really long story.” She glanced over her shoulder at Kaedo and Sandy, swallowed a sigh, and admitted, “It might be easier to just show you.”

So saying, and not giving him a chance to respond, she grabbed his hand and hoisted him up onto his feet. It was no small task, given his newly-returned size and strength, but Pigsy had always been willing to yield without much resistance, apparently at any age, and this time was no difference. Tripitaka recalled his other self, with his downcast eyes and his shuffling feet, shy and self-conscious and so much a product of what other people wanted from him.

She didn’t hug him again. She wanted to, but she didn’t.

Instead, she dragged him to over their two companions.

Kaedo stood up, wiped his hands hastily on his trousers, then held one out for Pigsy to shake. “Good to see you’re back to normal,” he said, sounding almost genuinely relieved. “Tripitaka wasn’t coping well. Like, _really_ not well.”

Pigsy frowned, shaking the offered hand. “With what?”

“I was coping just fine,” Tripitaka grumbled, neglecting to answer, then risked a glance at Sandy. “Is she okay?”

Kaedo shrugged. “She’s, uh, quiet,” he said noncommittally, chewing his lip. “That’s worth something, right?”

Possibly, yes, but Tripitaka wasn’t so sure it was a good something. This version of Sandy had thus far been almost the opposite of her older counterpart in the amount of noise she made, her willingness to be heard and seen, the way she would make her feelings known without hesitation or fear of reprisal. 

With none of the older Sandy’s experience, the genuine threat of pain if she didn’t hide well enough, this tiny human version of her cried freely and lustily; it did not bode well if she was learning to shut herself down, to stay silent and keep her feelings locked up inside. That was what the older Sandy did; it was why they were in this mess in the first place.

She didn’t get the chance to take a closer look. Pigsy, blinking at the unhappy toddler with a look of stunned disbelief, blanched and stammered, “How bloody long was I away?”

Tripitaka didn’t understand. Then she noticed the way he was gawking at them both, wide eyes darting from one to the other and back again, and the pieces fell into absurd place.

“She’s not mine!” she choked, not quite sure whether to laugh or punch him. “For heaven’s sake, Pigsy, it’s Sandy!”

“Of course it...” He trailed off, did a double-take, then stared slack-jawed at his miniature companion. “Wait, _what_?”

Kaedo, seemingly unable to help himself, burst out laughing.

“These two geniuses did it,” he explained between giggles, blessedly somewhat succinctly. “ _Someone_ couldn’t deal with her angsty god feelings. They stumbled into a place they really shouldn’t have, and hey presto: three young, dumb gods and a human monk who’s _way_ out of her depth.”

Tripitaka rolled her eyes. It was hard not to bristle at the slight, but she was so thankful he’d simplified the whole affair into a single sentence she decided to let it pass without comment. Let Pigsy judge her all he liked, she thought, so long as he was here and planned on staying.

“You’re back now, though,” she reminded him, clapping a hopeful hand onto his shoulder, admittedly as much to reassure herself that it was true as it was to draw their attention back to the one positive part of this. “So we must have done something right. Right?”

“Right.” Pigsy massaged his temples. “I mean, maybe? I don’t really...” He sighed, squeezing his eyes shut like he was fighting off a bad headache. “Could we, I don’t know, back up and start again?”

Kaedo sighed, waved a weary hand, and said, “Wish-fulfilment magic.”

“Oh.” A perplexed frown, a moment’s contemplation, and then: “ _Oh_.”

Spoken with perfect clarity, like that answered a dozen different questions all at once. Indeed, his whole body seemed to relax as he said it, like nothing more needed to be said on the subject at all.

Annoyed, Tripitaka threw up her hands and cried, “Am I the only one who doesn’t know about this stuff?”

“You’re human,” Pigsy pointed out kindly. “It’s to be expected.” Then, to Kaedo, “Tell me what they did.”

Tripitaka glared. “He’s human too, you know.”

Somewhat predictably, they both ignored that.

*

For perhaps the first time in her life, Tripitaka found that she didn’t care at all about the smaller details.

How and why Pigsy had returned to himself in precisely that moment: both important questions, and ones she knew would need answering soon — the sooner the better, if they wanted Monkey and Sandy to also be restored to their old, familiar, well-loved selves — but for now she found even her scholarly, truth-seeking mind could not bring itself to care very much. They felt like distant concerns, cast into the dust-gathering corners, displaced in favour of a simpler, softer, sweeter truth:

He was back.

She wasn’t alone any more.

She wasn’t—

She was no longer the only adult, desperately treading to keep from drowning in a sea of children. Even Kaedo, for all his worldliness, for all that he was in some ways more experienced than her, was still just a boy in body and spirit, and she was no more willing to place her burdens on his undeveloped back than she would have laid them down at Sandy’s tiny toddler’s feet or tossed them up to the heavens and hope that little Monkey, wherever he was, would catch them.

As so many worldly children did, Kaedo saw himself through the lens of maturity, believing himself grown far beyond his years through a life hard lived and lessons hard learned. But if this terrible little experiment had taught Tripitaka anything, it was that he wasn’t nearly as mature as he wanted her to believe. He was young, he was small, and though he would argue tooth and nail, he did not deserve the burden of this responsibility any more than the others did; she was trying to protect him as well.

But she no longer had to do it all by herself. No longer would she have to carry all four of them on her sore, stiff, stretched-out human shoulders: now, at long last, she had someone else to help. Pigsy, himself once more, big and strong and reliable, big and strong and _grown_ : just thinking about it helped to lift a little of the impossible weight that had been bearing down on her from the moment this ridiculous disaster had began.

A little, yes, and only a little.

But even just an hour ago, even just a little had seemed utterly impossible.

She could breathe now. She could stop, stand still, step away, and _breathe_.

And she did.

While Kaedo talked Pigsy through what he’d missed, bit by bit and moment by moment, Tripitaka took advantage of the certainty that they were both safe. That little Sandy was safe too, curled up between them with her toy fish, seemingly content to listen to the conversation, never mind that she couldn’t possibly understand a word of it. It was a relief beyond words, knowing that Pigsy would keep her and Kaedo safe, that Tripitaka was able now to simply step away and leave them, knowing that she was not their last line of adulthood.

 _Safe_ , all of them.

If not completely — because really, when were they ever completely safe, even when things were normal? — then at least a whole lot safer than they had been.

Safe enough.

Safe enough, yes, that she could slip away to catch her breath and not feel guilty or worried, not feel her own absence like a warning or a threat. Safe enough that she could leave their little hiding place, scout the nearby forest by herself, fangkris in hand, without her heart hammering out of her chest, without the panic and dread of picturing the three of them alone, vulnerable to the whims of lurking demons.

Pigsy would protect the others. She had nothing to worry about.

So she took her time, scouting and scouring the forest for any sign of movement, any whisper of sound, for footsteps or voices or breathing that didn’t belong, for demons or humans or gods or some other new threat.

This time, blessedly, she found nothing.

Only the silence of the forest, dappled and darkening as the day burned on towards evening. Only her own footsteps, her own breath, her own voice. Only herself, entirely alone, and it was the most incredible feeling.

She took her time. Scouting, searching, seeking. Securing the perimeter, making sure that the few loitering demons really had followed their leader in retreat, but also just catching her breath, taking in the cool forest air, the solitude, the peace of being partially unburdened.

For the first time in far too long, she felt like she’d been thrown a lifeline, something to cling to in her darkest and most helpless moments. She felt like there was a path ahead of her now, a direction to move towards. Wan, yes, and faint, little more than a flicker of promise on a far-distant horizon, but there just the same: if Pigsy was himself, there was hope for the others as well.

There was _hope_.

A faint, flickering, phantasmal shadow of a path, but a path even so. She only had to find its point of entry.

*

She was feeling revitalised when she returned to the others.

She felt lighter, calmer. Ironically, perhaps a little younger.

She felt almost, _almost_ like herself again.

It wouldn’t last, she knew. But it was enough that she felt it even briefly, then even just in the arms of the silent, solitary forest she had been able to pick herself up and remember how to breathe.

It didn’t need to last. It just needed to be what it was: a moment that was all her own.

And then, back. Back to the their hiding place, back to the others, and back to reality.

In her absence, Kaedo and Pigsy had settled into an easy routine, familiar and comfortable. They were still talking, but it now had the lighter air of casual conversation. Kaedo was hunched over a pile of wood, trying to get a fire going, and Pigsy, back in his old, well-worn clothes, was pacing back and forth nearby, rocking a dozing Sandy in his arms.

Tripitaka allowed herself a moment to take in the sweet sight, then swallowed her heart back down and once more became the monk and leader she knew they were expecting. “Forest seems clear for now,” she announced. “What can I do to help?”

“You can sit down and take it easy,” Kaedo suggested, without looking up.

Easier said than done, what with the restlessness still sticking to her bones.

Still, because she could now afford to, she tried. She found a small spot close to their supplies, out of the way of Kaedo’s little fire and mostly by herself, settled down, and made a show of trying to meditate. It was more for appearances than anything else; she knew she wouldn’t be able to fully relax until everything was back to normal, until Monkey had returned to them safe and unharmed, until he and Sandy were both themselves as well. No chance of relaxation or focus until then, she knew, but if she had learned anything from her time on the quest it was that appearances mattered, and for the one who wore the name of Tripitaka they mattered most of all.

She tried. Legs crossed, eyes closed, she imagined herself giving off an aura of calm, of meditation, of—

“Can’t relax, eh?”

All for naught, so it would seem. Tripitaka sighed, opened her eyes, and looked up at a smiling, bemused-looking Pigsy.

“Too much still to think about,” she admitted, somewhat ruefully.

“Yeah, I’ll bet. Little fella filled me in pretty good on what’s been happening.” Not waiting for an invitation, he sat down beside her, shifting Sandy’s small body so that her head rested more comfortably on his shoulder. “Sounds like you’ve had your hands pretty well full with the three of us.”

“You could say that, yeah.” Still, watching him cradle the sleeping toddler, she couldn’t help returning a little of his smile. “Looks like you’ve got yours full now.”

He chuckled, patting Sandy on the back and rocking her gently. “Ah, she’s no trouble. Light as a feather, quiet as a little mouse.” His expression flickered just slightly, brief enough that another might not have noticed, but Tripitaka knew him too well; it was no surprise, then, when his smile dimmed a little and he sighed. “Even when she’s like this, apparently.”

Tripitaka swallowed hard, feeling her own warmth begin to evaporate.

“She’s not,” she said softly. “At least, she wasn’t. Quiet, I mean. She was...” She turned away, wracked with guilt and self-loathing, wringing her hands in her lap. “She wailed like a banshee. Seriously, non-stop.”

Pigsy furrowed his brow, blinking down at the child in his arms, silent and mostly still, as though trying to wrap his head around such a thing. “This little thing?”

Tripitaka grimaced. “That little thing, yeah.”

“You sure?” No accusation, just the honest curiosity of one who had not been there to see it. “Because I’m pretty sure she’s not said more than two words since I... uh...” He waved a hand at himself, floundering for an appropriate descriptor. “...got back?”

True enough. Sandy had been almost entirely quiet since Tripitaka had revealed her awful truth, and of course that was a big part of the problem. Tripitaka hated that she couldn’t simply shrug and pretend not to understand the change in her, hated that she was the one responsible for it, that this, like Monkey’s absence, was a burden she couldn’t simply unload onto someone else.

Perhaps if it had been one of the others sitting with her now, she would have tried to evade the issue entirely, but Pigsy had always been the easiest one to talk to about things like this. He never judged others, perhaps feeling that he couldn’t without shining a light on his own personal shortcomings; it made him seem a bit closer to the ground, closer to the world of mortals, to know that he was fallible too, that even a powerful, earth-shaking god could make bad decisions and cause unwitting harm to those around him. He was the closest to human of them all, she thought, and that made it feel less heavy with him than it would with the others to admit to her own human weaknesses.

“It’s my fault,” she whispered, forcing herself to look up into Sandy’s sleeping face. “She was pretty normal, I think. Crying all the time, wanting to go back home, all that stuff. It was fine, it was...” She shook her head, wincing. “I mean, yeah, it was annoying, but it was... you know, it was a weird situation, and she was scared. Normal for a kid to bawl like that when she’s scared, right?”

Pigsy frowned, clearly still having trouble imagining the soundless infant in his arms making any kind of ruckus at all. “Uh... sure,” he agreed after a brief, puzzled moment. “Kids’ll do that, yeah.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “But I kind of... I don’t know. I yelled at her. Lost my patience, lost my temper. We were being hunted by demons, and she wouldn’t stop crying, and I just... I told her...”

But she couldn’t say it. Those awful words she heard again and again every time she saw the silent, shut-down Sandy, a regret so deep and so profound that she felt like it was choking her from the inside. The kind of regret that came from things that couldn’t be taken back, mistakes that couldn’t be unmade, wrongs that couldn’t be righted with an apology.

 _“I want to go home,”_ Sandy had wailed, lost and understandably frightened. And rather than seeking out the empathy that such a moment called for, Tripitaka had felt her temper snap and yelled, _“That’s never going to happen!”_

It still echoed inside her head. She knew that it echoed in Sandy’s too, _never_ , like a kind of punishment, like the threat of violence, far worse than being held in the grip of a demon or monster. _Never_ , the most final word in the whole wide world to a child so small, and it hurt all the more because Tripitaka knew that it was true.

She couldn’t explain it. She wouldn’t know where to even begin, even if Sandy had been old enough to understand.

 _They’ll hurt you,_ she wanted to tell her. _They’ll abandon you. They’ll leave you by the side of the road to die. You’ll live your whole life carrying the scars of what they did to you, don’t you see? You don’t want to go back there, they don’t want you. They’re not your family, Sandy, we are!_

All this she’d left out. All the important parts, evaporated in the red haze of frustration, and all that remained, the only thing she’d managed to impart on this this small, scared version of her friend was the fact that she would never again see the place she called home.

Pigsy, naturally oblivious to all of that, repositioned the little bundle in his arms, freeing up one hand to gently pat Tripitaka’s shoulder. “Happens to all of us,” he said kindly. “Kids are tough to handle. Any parent who says they’ve never lose their cool with a screaming baby or a tantrum-throwing toddler is either lying through their teeth or a blasted saint.” He gave her a quick reassuring squeeze, then rested his hand on Sandy’s back again, trying to soothe her as she started to fidget and squirm. “She’s a tough little kiddo: anyone can see that. You’re not going to break her into pieces just by yelling at her one time.”

A nice thought. But...

Tripitaka sighed, braced herself, and confessed: “I told her she’ll never go home again.”

“Ah.” Pigsy cleared his throat. “Well, uh... I see.”

Fists clenching in her lap, Tripitaka shook her head and pressed, “She was scared. She was scared out of her tiny mind, and she had a thousand good reasons to be. She was scared and she wouldn’t stop crying, wouldn’t stop telling me how she she just wanted to go home, and I just... I snapped. I snapped, and I shouted, and I told her...”

This time it was Pigsy’s turn to sigh. “I mean... it’s not like you were lying, eh?”

“That makes it worse, not better!” It did, for a thousand different reasons, only one of which she could even try to articulate, broken-voiced and broken-hearted: “The way she is right now... it’s the only time in her whole life when she doesn’t know pain or loss or loneliness. The only time when she’s happy and loved and cared for. Look at her, Pigsy: she’s _normal_. She’s normal and she’s human, and she’s so adorable. And I looked her in the eye and I told her... knowing that it’s true, I told her that she’ll never, ever...”

The word cut off in a choke, close to a sob, and it took her a long moment to recover herself.

“Easy, now,” Pigsy soothed, as gentle with her as he was with the child in his arms. Ever the mountain of calm, Tripitaka thought, and ever a reliable harbour no matter how violent the storm. “Breathe slowly, yeah?”

Tripitaka nodded, forced the sob back down into her stomach, and tried again. 

“She’s been quiet as a mouse ever since,” she managed, still a little tearful despite her best efforts. “Even when she’s crying. She just sort of... shut down.” She pointed at the toddler in Pigsy’s arms, sleeping but restless and so, so quiet. “Silent and miserable, hiding from everything and everyone. She’s just like our Sandy now, the one who got us into this stupid mess in the first place because she couldn’t process her feelings.”

Pigsy was quiet for a long while, taking that all in, rocking Sandy back and forth as she wriggled and shifted in her sleep, rubbing her little back until, bit by bit, she grew less restless.

Finally, thoughtfully, he said, “At least this little one goes to sleep when you tell her to, eh? Not much of that stuff going around in our Sandy, from what I hear tell.”

True enough; just as it had brought her comfort to see Sandy take joy in food, it was a comfort too to see her sleeping now, if not peacefully, at least without too much distress.

Still...

“I was supposed to protect her,” Tripitaka sighed, wringing her hands again. “She’s helpless like this. And she’s small and vulnerable and... and _human_. Not like you and Monkey; you guys still had your powers, even if you didn’t have the age and experience to back them up. She doesn’t have any of that; she’s a lost, lonely human child, and I was supposed to take care of her. Instead, I turned her into the exact thing she was trying to wish herself out of in the first place.”

“She’ll be fine,” Pigsy insisted, fingers twitching as he resisted the urge to wave again in dismissal. “Kids are resilient. And if she’s even half as much like our Sandy as you reckon she is, this one’s even more resilient than most.” He smiled, but it was shaky in a way it hadn’t been earlier. “Have a bit of faith in her, yeah?”

Easier said than done, Tripitaka thought, when faced with such a fragile little thing, so completely dependent on these strangers who kept insisting that they were her friends, her—

 _Family_.

Tripitaka choked, forcing down another sob as she watched Pigsy rock her and hum to her, soothing her even in her sleep. It made her ache for them both: for the former soldier who had wanted nothing more when he was young than to be a caregiver, a peacemaker, a gentle, kind, and loving soul just like this, watching over children and keeping them safe... and for the little girl, too, slumbering in his arms, so tiny and scared, so unaware of how awful her life would soon become.

They would both find peace with their future-pasts. She knew that; she was a part of it.

But oh, the hells and horrors they would both have to go through before they got there.

“I do have faith in her,” Tripitaka said to Pigsy, confessional and just a little bitter. “It’s me I don’t have faith in. Her and Monkey, they were both handling this mess just fine before I...”

She stopped, watching Pigsy’s frown deepen at Monkey’s name, realising a moment too late that he would need filling in on that mishap as well.

Another one of her failures, she thought miserably, readying to be thrown under the wheels for judgement. 

There was no judgement in Pigsy’s eyes when he looked at her, though, nor in his voice when he pressed, delicate and tentative and very careful, “And where, pray tell, is our great and glorious god-king?”

This time Tripitaka didn’t even try to shroud her self-loathing.

“That,” she sighed, voice thick with it, “is another long story.”

*

She explained it to him over a hot meal, the first she’d had all day.

The hour was a little awkward — too late for lunch, too early for supper — but Pigsy didn’t seem to care at all: he had been himself for a couple of hours by now, and he could not process any more information without getting some food into him.

Tripitaka, being rather more hungry than she’d care to admit, made no effort talk him out of it.

He cooked with his usual zeal and enthusiasm, raiding their ill-gained supplies for something that met his definition of ‘edible’ and cheerfully tossing everything he found into his little cooking pot. It was a wonderful return to routine and familiarity, a poignant reminder of all the differences between this gentle giant of a god, her friend, and the shy, self-conscious little boy he once was, and Tripitaka took no shame in the way her heart leaped to see him beaming and sneaking spoonfuls from the pot as he worked.

Naturally, he took the story of Monkey’s existential crisis and subsequent cloud-borne disappearance as much in his stride as he had taken everything else thus far.

“Typical bloody Monkey,” he muttered, rolling his eyes. “Wouldn’t be the first time he got some news he didn’t like, threw a tantrum and stormed off to who knows where.”

Tripitaka, feeling much the same way about Monkey as she did about Sandy — namely, that his pain and subsequent tantrums were entirely her fault — was not quite so easily comforted.

“He’s just a child,” she reminded Pigsy. “I know he’s not exactly known for clearheadedness or maturity, even when he’s himself, but at least he’s not usually a literal child. Our Monkey... he’s lived, he’s seen the world, experienced it. He spent a thousand years on Jade Mountain, training, learning to use his powers, learning to be a proper god...”

Considering Monkey’s derision for all things academic, Pigsy’s derisive snicker wasn’t wholly unprovoked. “Wasn’t exactly a model student there, though, was he? Even with all that stuff.”

A good point. Still, Tripitaka sighed. “That was his choice,” she pressed. “But that hot-headed little boy out there... he’s not had the chance to make bad choices and learn from them. He’s just a child, alone in a strange new world. A world he’s just found out the hard way is awful and horrible and all his fault.”

Staring broodily into his bowl, Kaedo barked a humourless laugh.

“Some of us had to learn that lesson before we were even old enough to talk,” he pointed out bitterly, “and we didn’t have some fancy god-cloud to fly us off into the middle of nowhere so we could throw tantrums about it.” He gave Sandy a nudge with his boot. “Isn’t that right?”

Sandy, sitting quietly at his feet and playing with her fish, glared up at him. “No hitting,” she snapped, then waved the toy at Tripitaka as if to punctuate her point. “Stupid human said so.”

Tripitaka sighed. If they ever got Monkey back, she would have to impress on him some very important lessons about not teaching small children the word ‘stupid’.

Pigsy, meanwhile, had reached down to deftly pluck the little fish out of Sandy’s hands. “Maybe no waving your toys around in people’s faces either, eh, little whelpling?”

Sandy scrunched up her face. “Mine!” she whined, floundering and flailing futilely for the thing. “Mine, please, mine!”

“Hold up a second.” He was looking at Tripitaka now, a sombre, dangerous look crossing his face as he seemed to grasp the nature of the little toy. “Please tell me you chuckleheads did _not_ make a child’s plaything out of my shirt.”

Tripitaka smothered a laugh. It felt good.

“Actually, you did that all by yourself,” she told him, relishing the familiar warmth that kicked behind her ribs at his incredulous stare. “The younger you, I mean. She wouldn’t stop crying, so you made that silly little thing to calm her down.”

“Hasn’t let it out of her hands since,” Kaedo affirmed, with a softer-than-usual grin. “Came in pretty handy, actually, when we were fighting the demons.”

Pigsy pondered this for a beat, then grew inexplicably pensive. His expression clouded over, introspective and private, and he handed the toy back to Sandy without further comment. He ducked his head when it was done, though, in a strange sort of mirror to his younger self. Not shy, exactly, not like that version of him, but sort of quietly self-conscious, like he had unwittingly tapped into memories buried a lifetime ago.

“Go figure,” he murmured, with the softest sigh Tripitaka had ever heard. “Suppose it makes sense, eh? Always was better with the little ones than with...”

He stopped, shaking his head. Tripitaka thought again of his younger self, the weight of others’ expectations bearing down on his shoulders, the fear of disappointing those who had already picked out his path for him. She remembered the way he would look at the ground rather than look her in the eye, the way he spoke in a mumble even when had something worth saying, the way he would stammer and apologise for nothing at all.

She thought, too, of the way he was with little Sandy, calm and comfortable, the way he would call her ‘guppy’ and set her at ease seemingly without trying at all; she recalled, smiling sadly, the way he defended her against Monkey’s antics, pushing him away, the only time he’d shown physical force until that point, spurred to action by the injustice of someone big bullying someone small. Powerful, just like now, but still so gentle.

“You were great with her,” Tripitaka whispered, feeling it like a blow, a softness that stung. “I kind of wish I’d let you deal with Monkey too, honestly. I’m sure you would’ve done a better job with him than I did.”

She shook her head, sighing heavily. It didn’t matter: what was done was done, and she had to live with her mistakes just as the young Monkey would one day learn to live with his. Such was the pain of growing up.

“I don’t know about that,” Pigsy mused, almost to himself. “But hey, it’s not too late.”

This said with so much of his usual cheeriness that Tripitaka almost flinched. Whatever unpleasant nostalgia had been haunting him a moment ago seemed to have loosened its grip on him now, and he was himself once more: full-grown, mature and dedicated, focused on nothing more complicated than the situation immediately in front of him.

Once again, she wanted to hug him.

Kaedo, ever the little cynic, snorted. “Easier said than done,” he pointed out dryly. “Unless you’re planning on launching yourself into the air and flying after him.”

“Less of that lip, now,” Pigsy shot back. Then, aside to Tripitaka, “If our Monkey is anything like that lad...”

“Worse,” Tripitaka said, without hesitation. “Much worse.”

“Shocker.” The accompanying eye-roll was, all things considered, well-earned. “Look. I may not have his cloud, or her speed—” This, he punctuated by leaning forward and lightly ruffling Sandy’s hair, much to her displeasure. “—but I’m handy enough in a pinch, and I fancy I know a thing or two about where an angry, all-powerful show-off might wander off to.”

“You do?” The burning ember of hope in Tripitaka’s chest was so hot it almost hurt. “I mean, you would?”

“Sure.” A shrug, casual and careless, clearly meant to reassure her. “Let me finish my dessert, maybe take a little nap, and I’ll see if I can’t hunt down our troublemaking mini-simian and drag him back by the ear. Sound good?”

Better than good, in fact. Even if she didn’t really think he would find any success, just the idea of being able to leave that seemingly insurmountable problem in someone else’s hands left Tripitaka almost on the brink of tears again.

Never mind that the task was all but impossible, never mind the fact that not even a fully powered Pigsy could travel a tenth of the distance that any version of Monkey could traverse on his cloud in the blink of an eye. Never mind that Monkey was an expert, young or old, in not getting caught or being found until he wanted to be. Never mind that Pigsy was especially bad at handling him, even when they were both having good days.

Never mind any of that: what mattered was that he was willing. Whether he truly believed in his own chances of success or not, he was offering to take onto his own shoulders the arduous task of finding Monkey and bringing him back safely. Impossible or not, still he was offering to step up and take that burden onto himself.

This time, Tripitaka didn’t even try to restrain herself: she set down her bowl, stepped carefully over Sandy’s fussing little body, and threw herself into Pigsy’s arms, hugging him and hugging him and hugging him until her arms were sore.

“I’m _so_ glad you’re back,” she whispered, practically sobbing the words into his chest.

Kaedo, watching this exchange with the typical disgust of a young boy faced with an emotional adult, stuck his tongue out and gave a melodramatic shudder.

“Don’t suppose you’ve figured out how that happened, by the way?” he muttered, no doubt more as a means of getting Tripitaka back on track than out of any real curiosity. “Because if we have to throw the other two into a pit of demons to scare them back to their old selves, there’s going to be a whole mess of trouble.”

Taking the hint, Tripitaka pulled away and shuffled back to her own seat. “I don’t think we’ll need to do any of that,” she said, wiping surreptitiously at her damp eyes.

Pigsy flashed her a knowing smile. “Oh?” he wheedled. “You got a theory there, Tripitaka?”

“Maybe.” She let the wheedling slide, and the suspicious gleam in his eyes. “Hard to know for sure without putting it into practice. But I don’t think... I mean, with you, I don’t think it was about fighting the demons.”

She felt awkward all of a sudden, trying to express herself coherently and succinctly. Too much time spent trying to communicate with children had left her tongue tangled and thick in her mouth; she stumbled over words that would have once come naturally to her, fumbled in trying to explain what she’d spent the whole of her time alone working through and thinking through again and again and again.

She felt foolish, like her intellect had abandoned her, and she could only hope that her theory was sound enough to carry itself lone, without the need of her mouth to drive the point home.

Her theory being thus:

That it wasn’t the demons at all that had brought Pigsy back to himself, nor was it the thrill of victory or the rush of combat or the familiarity of having his rake in his hands and the lightning at his fingertips. Not the adrenaline, not the energy, not the fight itself at all, but the moment that came after. The moment a shy, self-conscious god made peace with himself and what he was.

 _“Guess there’s something to be said for me being a god after all,”_ he’d said, shell-shocked and shaken. He’d looked so small, despite his size, as he grappled with the parts of himself he’d spent his whole young life hating, the parts he’d been told again and again and again would never be good enough.

They were, of course, and so was he, and in the moment of victory, saving not just one but three human lives, feeling the full force of a god’s power flowing through him unrestrained and untempered, turned perhaps for the first time in his life to a pure and righteous cause. Connection, not just with his powers and his strength, but with his identity, with himself.

It was exactly what he’d been struggling with, the wish he’d tried to make. She’d stopped him, of course, still hating that horrible word and all the damage it had wrought, but he had tried and he had felt it, and it was there in his heart if not on his tongue: to be mortal and happy, to be human, to be—

But he wasn’t, and he couldn’t be.

And in the very moment he’d made peace with that, the moment he accepted what he was: a god, truly and completely, with all the strength and power that came with, the moment he accepted that as his identity, the moment he accepted _himself_ , so he was again.

 _Himself_ , Pigsy, competent and confident and comfortable, just as he should be.

It wa a sound theory, Tripitaka was at least mostly sure. And a very worrying one.

She kept that part to herself, though, sharing only the bare bones of the idea, the parts she trusted herself to talk through without trembling or falling to pieces.

It went over as well as she could hope for, being met with contemplative silence from Pigsy and a grudging, sour-faced, “I suppose it makes _some_ kind of sense,” from Kaedo.

Tripitaka suspected he was just pouting because he hadn’t thought of it first.

It took Pigsy a little longer to catch up. Still struggling, no doubt, with being the subject of a conversation that leaned so heavily on events and experiences he didn’t remember. He knew himself as he was, and Tripitaka was sure he recalled the young boy he used to be, that shy, overburdened child thrown head-first into a world and life he didn’t want; he knew both versions of himself, yes, but he knew only what Tripitaka and Kaedo had told him of his recent reversion and its subsequent adventures. It was as unreal to him as someone else’s dream.

Still, he took it in stride, just as he did with everything else, and when he finally reinserted himself into the discussion he did it with another smile and a warm, affectionate wink at Tripitaka.

“You see, there?” he said, light and teasing. “You might be lousy with kids, little monk, but you’re the best psychoanalyst this side of Jade Mountain. Who else could figure out all this stuff, hmm?”

Tripitaka tried to chuckle, but the sound lodged itself in her throat and stuck fast. She still remembered the heartbroken look on Monkey’s face as he whistled for his cloud, still remembered the way Sandy’s shrieking stopped, cut off as if by a blade, the way she grew suddenly quiet, the cries that had once shaken the trees growing softer and weaker until she was weeping in silence.

Both of them struck with the most unimaginable kind of pain, both of them facing a future they should never have known about at their young ages, and every breath of it all her fault.

Little wonder, then, that she couldn’t see herself in the blessed light that Pigsy did.

Still, for his benefit, she forced herself to say, “We all have our strengths, I guess.”

“Right.” He flashed a grin, so big and so bright that Tripitaka let herself be swept up in it, balmed and bathed in the gentle reminder that he was back, that he was here, that she was no longer alone. “So you just sit tight, yeah? Put that great big brain of yours to good use and figure out how to teach self-actualisation to a toddler.”

Tripitaka risked a glance at Sandy, who was busy trying to feed a meal of grass and dirt to her toy fish, and thoroughly failing to grasp why the knotted ball of fabric was not interested.

“Right,” she said, swallowing back a sigh. “So glad you’re giving me the easy job.”

“Easier than mine,” Pigsy reminded her, cracking his knuckles. “While you’re sitting there, all nice and cozy in front of that warm, toasty fire, I’ll be out there in the middle of who-knows-where hunting down a sulking, rebellious, pre-adolescent Monkey King.”

Tripitaka opened her mouth to concede that point, almost mustering a chuckle, but she didn’t get the chance.

A thundercrack, a sudden thickening of the air around them, and before any one of them had fully processed what was happening, there he was, leaping down from his cloud with a flourish and a noticeably wobbly grin.

“You called?”

Tripitaka blinked about two dozen times. Then, with a shuddering mix of joy, hope, dread, and worry, she heard her own voice cry out— 

“Monkey?!”

“The one and only.” And without further ado, he swaggered over to the fire, jabbed the newly-restored Pigsy in the chest and demanded, “Now, who in the seven hells is this loser?”

*


	10. Chapter 10

*

“You couldn’t just let me have my moment, could you?”

Rather than being affronted by the pint-sized Monkey King poking him in the chest, Pigsy seemed more annoyed by the fact that even as a small child he’d somehow found a way to steal his thunder: he, who only moments ago had been on the verge of charging off into the unknown on an impossible quest, was now being violently accosted by the very child he was about to go looking for.

Tripitaka might have been amused, if she wasn’t so vividly aware of how much Monkey had changed since the last time they saw each other.

And not at all for the better.

On the surface, the only place that mattered to him, he was exactly the same: all smugness and swagger and attitude, the picture of preening arrogance she would have expected. But that was only a veneer, and beneath its cracked, flawed surface she could far too easily see the darker truth: the lines cutting through his perfect young face, the dark smudges under his eyes, the wet sheen of tears barely held at bay in their depths. A hundred little signs, and a hundred bigger ones, all pointing to a poorly-buried cache of unprocessed pain.

Not for the first time, and with a pang of grief that grew more unbearable every time, Tripitaka was reminded of Sandy. Her Sandy, the one she missed, the one who had failed so badly at processing her own pain that she had wished this change on them. Sandy, who had not slept since the village of lost children, who couldn’t cry and didn’t understand why her body then tried to shed its tears in other ways; Sandy, who had lived through a lifetime of suffering and loneliness, who had lived through a lifetime of pain and still couldn’t understand why it hurt.

Monkey looked just like that now: achingly young, impossibly small, and the shaky smirk on his face did nothing to mask the hurt hidden behind his teeth.

Tripitaka wanted to go to him, wanted to hug him and comfort him and brush away his tears before he had a chance to deny them as Sandy had done. She wanted to apologise, wanted to sit him down and talk it all through, to be better now than she was the last time; he was back, he was unharmed and in one piece, and there was nothing in the world she wanted more than to sit him down, give him something to eat, and try and make right her mistakes.

Of course, he didn’t give her the chance.

He was Monkey, and even at such a young age it seemed that he was an expert in deflecting, in keeping at arm’s length anything he didn’t want to talk about, think about, or generally engage with in any meaningful way.

He spent a great deal of time and effort studying Pigsy from all angles, poking and prodding at him like he was some kind of mythical creature or a subject for experimentation; this he did without sparing so much as a word for Pigsy’s reminders that he was his elder and better, that the little upstart had better start showing him the proper respect if he didn’t want to eat lightning.

While she couldn’t condone the threat of violence against a child — even a child as arrogant and uniquely challenging as Monkey — Tripitaka was nonetheless happy to see Pigsy showing some backbone again; the last time he and Monkey had clashed like this, he had been so shy, so unwilling to stand up for himself. Unable to believe, perhaps, that there was anything in him worth standing up for.

It was good to have her Pigsy back. Older Pigsy, wiser Pigsy. A Pigsy who had clashed and bickered and tussled with Monkey countless times since the beginning of the quest, who wouldn’t take any nonsense from him no matter what age or shape or body he wore.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” he grumbled, swatting Monkey’s hand away for the dozenth time. “I’m the same Pigsy I was when you left. Just... a few centuries older, apparently.” Monkey tried to poke him again, and Pigsy gave his wrist a sharp smack. “Seriously, kid. You’d better stop doing that if you value your fingers.”

Monkey pouted. “Ugh, you got all boring now. I liked you better when you were sad and didn’t say or do anything and you let me walk all over you. You were fun, then.”

“You want to see me having fun, lad?” Pigsy’s nostrils flared, not nearly as playful as Tripitaka would have liked. “Keep pushing me like that, you’ll see how much fun I can be.”

Tripitaka took a deep breath, stepping between them before one or the other could be goaded into violence.

“I’m glad you came back, Monkey,” she said, bringing the focus back to what really mattered, and stroking his ego a little in the process. “Are you all right?”

“Pfft.” He stuck out his tongue, then quickly somersaulted out of reach when she tried to touch his shoulder. “I’m the Monkey King, remember? I’m _always_ all right.”

He did an admirable job of keeping his voice from breaking, no doubt well-practised in hiding his softer feelings from his peers, but Tripitaka knew him too well to take the flashiness at its face-value. His tone might be cool and mostly convincing, but there was no escaping the way his hands were twitching at his sides, clenching in little spasms, like he was fighting the instinct to ball them into fists.

“Are you sure?” she asked, pushing as gently as she could.

Not gently enough, apparently. His eyes flashed, then darkened, and there it was: anger, wild and untamed, a Monkey-typical tantrum made infinitely worse by his age.

“Fine!” he yelled, voice already starting to pitch and tremble, fleeing his tight control as if it were nothing. “You were, right, okay? That what you want to hear? Dumb stupid human right, dumb stupid Monkey wrong. Okay?”

Tripitaka sighed. It wasn’t exactly a surprise to hear it, but still...

“That’s not what I wanted to hear at all,” she said, very quietly.

“Yeah, well, it’s true. Just like you said: this whole stupid world is all my fault. All the demons and all the bad stuff and everything. It’s all my fault, and everyone hates me except those idiots from that one stupid stinky village, and they don’t even count because the _brat_ saved them.” He threw up his hands, as if that part was almost worse to him than the rest, then floundered to slip his mask of bravado back into place. “But whatever. I don’t even care anyway.”

“Really?” Kaedo piped up, seemingly unable to restrain himself. “Because it kind of sounds like you care a whole lot.”

“Not now, Kaedo!” Tripitaka snapped, already failing in her promise not to lose her temper again. “Monkey, listen to me...”

“Nah.” Too casual, too careless, and entirely too cool. “Had enough of listening. Listened a whole lot at this stupid monastery I found, all full of know-it-all monks just like you. They told me lots of stuff. Lots and lots of stuff.” His voice pitched, growing squeaky; she watched his eyes flit around, searching their little campsite for a distraction, something to drag him away from the unwanted conversation. “So I don’t need to hear any more. And listening’s boring anyway. So I’m just gonna go and, uh...” He waved his hand in a vague dismissive gesture, then lit up as his gaze fell on Sandy. “Ooh, the brat’s still here! Hi, little brat!”

Sandy giggled, and chirped, “Monkey!”

Monkey beamed, clearly delighted to see that she’d figured out how to say his name. “Good brat!” he cooed, then turned back to Tripitaka. “That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna take her and we’re gonna go all the way over there, and none of us are gonna listen to you any more. Okay? Okay!”

And so saying, he scooped Sandy up into his arms and darted away with her.

Much to Tripitaka’s irritation, Sandy was not annoyed or upset by the disturbance this time; perhaps because it was Monkey, she seemed to revel in the attention. She giggled some more, then started chanting his name over and over again like a mantra, effectively cutting off any efforts Tripitaka might have made to separate them with calculated remarks like ‘you’re upsetting her’.

“Let him go for now,” Pigsy said, laying a restraining hand on her shoulder before she could chase after them and make the attempt anyway. “He’s just got back, and he’s clearly still processing some messy revelations. Let the poor lad unwind a bit before you start bombarding him with deep existentialist conversations, yeah?”

Every instinct in Tripitaka’s body wanted to shout him down, to run to Monkey’s side anyway, to try and fix his obvious hurt right now, straight away, immediately. He was clearly in pain, whether he wanted to admit it or not, and every time she looked at him she felt her own guilt hang heavier, like a noose around her neck waiting to drop.

“It’s my fault,” she said to Pigsy. “He’s processing those revelations because I lost my temper and shared them with him. He’s hurting because of me. And all this denial...” She shook her head, then shivered. “That’s what got us into this mess in the first place, remember? Sandy denying her darker feelings, rejecting them, not understanding them. I don’t want Monkey to end up like that. I don’t want...”

Pigsy’s fingers dug a little deeper into her shoulder. Not hard, and certainly not rough, but with just enough of a bite to cut off the flood of words before they could drown her completely.

“Easy, now,” he said, and the murky waters cleared away with a softer-coloured reminder of all the reasons she had to be grateful: he was here, she was not the only one dealing with this. “They’re both going to be okay. They grow up, they deal with this stuff in their own way, and they become the frustrating idiots we all know and love. You already know that, you goofball: you’ve spent the better part of a year questing with them. You know they turn out okay.”

That wasn’t the comfort he seemed to think it was: Tripitaka had learned a great deal about her three gods in the weeks and months they’d been questing together, but none of that learning had ever amounted to ‘okay’.

The better part of a year questing with Monkey, who used arrogance and bravado to cover up his insecurities and doubts, who would brag himself and his companions into a thousand types of trouble if he wasn’t kept in check with the crown sutra. The better part of a year questing with Sandy, lost and confused, so emotionally stunted that she had wished herself back to infancy because it was the only way she could understand her feelings.

The better part of a year questing with Pigsy, too. Pigsy, who really did seem to be ‘okay’, at least on the surface. But Tripitaka understood him now, so much better from the time spent with his younger self, and the little cracks that had always been there, carefully buried beneath the surface of his smiles and sarcasm, were stark and inescapable now. Like the others, he was still learning, growing, becoming more than what he was... but he wasn’t there yet.

Tripitaka loved her gods. Truly and deeply, they were her family and she loved them all so much. But if any one of them was even half as much ‘okay’ as Pigsy seemed to believe they all were, they would never have found themselves in this situation in the first place.

He was right about one thing, though. Monkey had just gotten back, returning to them by choice from whatever dark corners of the world he’d visited to get his answers; he was distressed and clearly hurting, and perhaps it would do more good than harm to let him catch his breath and bask in denial for a while.

He was back. That was what mattered, the only thing that did: he was back and he was safe.

“All right,” she conceded with a sigh. “I suppose I should finish my meal, anyway...”

“Atta girl,” Pigsy said, gesturing for her to sit back down. “You need to take it easy too, you know. Can’t be fretting and worrying your whole life away. You’ll grow old before your time.”

Tripitaka chuckled. Weak and watery, but still, it gave her some reassurance to know that she could manage it. “I guess you’d know all about that,” she conceded lightly. “Given the present situation and all.”

And so, following his direction his and lead, she sat back down, picked up her bowl, and dutifully resumed eating.

Kaedo, meanwhile, was watching Monkey and Sandy with a cynical, somewhat bemused expression on his face.

“Right,” he deadpanned. “Let’s just leave the traumatised toddler with the traumatised pre-adolescent. What could _possibly_ go wrong?”

Rather deservedly, Tripitaka smacked him with her spoon.

*

To everyone’s surprise, and Tripitaka’s most of all, the answer to Kaedo’s question was ‘nothing at all’.

Monkey seemed to understand that the others were willing to leave him alone so long as he played nicely with Sandy. Being rather more interested in self-preservation than in annoying his little charge, at least for the time being, he thus contented himself with playing and engaging with her gently, on her own level, without causing trouble.

Moreover, Tripitaka had a sneaking suspicion that any desire he might have had to antagonise her died a swift death the instant he realised she could now say his name.

From the moment he’d snatched her up and dragged her away, she hadn’t stopped. They sat now together in a quiet little space on the other side of the copse, and Tripitaka could hear the high river-like burble of her voice as she cheeped “Monkey!” over and over and over.

Monkey made a show of being unimpressed, perhaps even a bit annoyed by the endless repetition, but even from a distance Tripitaka could see that he was secretly grinning.

Watching the two of them at play — Monkey flying Sandy’s little fish over her head while she stretched and reached and floundered for it — even Pigsy seemed unable to keep a fond smile from touching his face.

“They’re pretty cute,” he remarked. “Can’t say having kids was ever on the table for me, but if it had been...”

His smile grew wistful, then, a private sort of regret that she could tell she wasn’t supposed to have noticed.

Politely averting her gaze, Tripitaka kept her focus on Monkey and Sandy. Her smile was soft too, affection touched by sorrow, and her voice was soft too when she said, “They’re pretty cute, yeah. I mean, they’re a lot of trouble. Like, _a lot_ of trouble. But definitely cute.”

Pigsy seemed not to hear her. He hadn’t taken his eyes off them, chuckling to himself as Monkey threw Sandy’s fish some distance away and Sandy scrambled after it like a puppy learning to play fetch. A touching scene, even Tripitaka had to admit, but she saw too easily the cracks in both players’ veneers, the tension pulling Monkey’s mouth taut, the subdued silence as Sandy wobbled back with the thing and deposited it proudly at his feet.

They were cute, it was true. Adorable, even. But they were also very troubled, and those troubles wouldn’t go away by ignoring them, however badly she and Pigsy wished they would.

Still, because it seemed that gods always buried themselves deeper than humans in their bad habits and denial, Pigsy murmured, “Are you sure we can’t just leave them like that?”

For just a second, certainly no longer, Tripitaka assumed he was joking. Then she realised he wasn’t, and the tender moment evaporated in a weary, exasperated glare. “Are you serious?”

“Why not?” He held up the troublemaking, life-saving plant, safe and sound now that it was back under his care. “I’m kind of enjoying having my life in my own hands for once. You know?”

Tripitaka rolled her eyes. She supposed she could understand his hopefulness, all things considered; given the near-disaster that had started this whole thing, he could hardly be blamed for not wanting Sandy to touch his beloved plant again. Still, as much as there was to be said for the lack of conflict, she’d only been babysitting her pint-sized companions for a day and she was already drained and strained beyond all words.

“We’re not leaving them like that,” she told him. “Did you forget about the part where our pre-pubescent Monkey King threw a tantrum and ran away, flying off to who knows where and getting into who knows what kind of trouble?” She gestured frantically, almost knocking the poor plant out of Pigsy’s hands in the process, and didn’t bother to apologise. “It’s challenging enough to keep him on a leash when he’s an adult! When he’s like _this_...”

She stopped, annoyance tapering off into something else, a fresh shade of guilt, of hating herself for being so unable to handle Monkey in his current form, so unable to rein in her own frustrations and deal with a version of her friend who wasn’t so very different from his older self, who was just as powerful, just as arrogant, just as full of pride. So what if he he pushed her, so what if he threw tantrums, so what if he stormed off? Wasn’t she used to all that from him by now?

The difference wasn’t in him; it was in her. It was in the way she saw him when he was like this: smaller, more fragile, vulnerable even with all his powers. He was a child, and that made him her charge, and that made her his protector, and that—

That was where she kept failing, wasn’t it?

Again and again, even when her gods were children, even when they were held captive by demons, even when she had Kaedo’s fangkris in her hand and they nothing but their wits, still she was the one who needed them. Still she failed to protect them, still she turned to them, even at their smallest and weakest, none of them made to carry so much weight, to protect her instead.

She tried to steady her breath, heard it rattle in her chest, her throat, felt it stick soundlessly between her teeth.

“We can’t leave them like this,” she said again, hoarse and serrated with her own shame. “We need them.”

 _I need them,_ she meant, and those jagged edges of self-disgust clawed desperately at the space behind her ribs.

Pigsy sighed, setting the plant down at his feet, safely out of reach. “Yeah, I know. Still, nice to dream, eh?”

It was certainly no dream to Tripitaka, who’d had her hands full with out-of-control children for so long now they could scarcely remember being empty, but she supposed she understood this as well. Pigsy, who had engaged so naturally with little Sandy when he was young too, who still engaged naturally with her as himself, who was — by his own admission — a better hand with children than with his fellow full-grown gods. Little wonder if he felt more comfortable with his companions in their present states, he who was so often the butt of Monkey’s jokes, whose life rested in Sandy’s incapable hands while she held the plant, who was so seldom taken seriously and so frequently taken for granted.

Tripitaka took a couple of deep breaths, and willed herself to think of him and not herself.

“I get it,” she said softly. “I do. But...”

“But we all have to grow up some time, right?” His chuckle had little humour, and little of the warmth she’d come to expect from him; he seemed to be struggling to shake off his wistfulness. “Suppose it’s for the best, anyway. I mean, this Sandy might make more sense, but at least ours knows how to tie her own shoes. Right?”

Tripitaka coughed awkwardly. “Uh... sure.”

Sensing that he’d set the bar a little too high, even with that, he cleared his throat and hastily changed the subject. “So, uh... hey, did I thank you yet? You know, for keeping the _other_ little one in one piece?”

He picked up the plant, as though to punctuate the point, and held it out for her perusal.

Tripitaka didn’t take the thing, but she did manage to smile for him. “Any time, Pigsy.”

“I mean it,” he said, with sudden, unexpected seriousness. “I know you’re not exactly sold on the whole ‘destined to save my life’ thing, but it means a lot that you’d take care of it anyway, even with your hands full of rugrats. You know, Sandy’s almost killed the blasted thing half a dozen times already, and Monkey would probably make a hat out of it given half the chance. It means a lot that there’s at least one person I can depend on.”

It was a double blow, powerful because of how much better she knew and understood him now, because she had seen the parts of him that felt unworthy, that still struggled with the idea that his life might any kind of hold value to someone else, and powerful as well because it was everything she’d come to loathe in herself, the fear of letting her gods down in the moment of vulnerability when they were the ones depending on her.

“I...” Her throat was suddenly dry, her eyes much less so. She blinked rapidly, swallowed hard, and lied, barely above a whisper, “It was no trouble.”

A lie, perhaps, but a good one. One with good intentions, at least, and worth it for the way it made his smile grow warm again, the way it loosened his shoulders for perhaps the first time since he came back to himself, the way it allowed him to sit back and let out a long, contented breath, finally at ease.

“You’re a good one,” he mused, taking great care to keep his gaze on the horizon, on the children playing in the distance, on anything except her damp, misty eyes. “And the three of us are bloody lucky to have you.”

Another lie, she was sure, just like her own.

But Tripitaka found herself just as grateful for his as he had been for hers.

*

To no-one’s surprise, it wasn’t long before Monkey grew bored.

Loudly and belligerently bored, as she’d come to expect of him.

He stomped back to the fire, content to simply leave Sandy on her own, stopped directly in front of Tripitaka, then drew himself up to his full — still diminutive — height, and demanded, “What did you do to it?”

Tripitaka blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”

Monkey huffed out an irritable, impatient breath, clearly assuming she was trying to be clever or evasive rather than simply not understanding.

“The brat,” he clarified, looking very serious. “It’s all quiet and stupid...” He paused to consider that for a beat, then amended: “Uh, stupid _er_. ’Cause it was already pretty stupid.”

“Monkey.” Tripitaka fought the urge to massage her temples. “You and I need to have a very long talk about that word and why you can’t just throw it around like—”

“Whatever, human. Point is, the stupid brat is stupid and boring and not fun any more.” He leaned in as close as his position would allow, looking Tripitaka dead in the eye, and demanded in the hard voice of a disapproving older brother who would allow no-one but himself to do harm to his baby sister, “What did you _do_ to it?”

The last remnants of Tripitaka’s calm evaporated. She didn’t lose her temper again — wouldn’t, couldn’t, not after the last time — but she clenched her jaw so tight that even Monkey thought it wise to take a step back. 

“She’s had some difficult things to adjust to,” she explained in a terse, irritable mutter.

“A bit like you, eh?” Pigsy volunteered, elbowing Monkey in the ribs as he slunk past.

“I’m nothing like that little brat,” Monkey said haughtily. “For a start, I’m a god. I’m smart and powerful and awesome and brilliant. That thing is just a tiny human. It doesn’t even know its own name, and it eats grass.”

Tripitaka choked. “It does _what_!?”

Pigsy, spluttering too, jumped up to his feet. “Uh, yeah, I’ll just mosey on over there and put a stop to that...”

And off he ran, as fast as Tripitaka had ever seen him move, to rescue Sandy from her ill-advised experimentation.

Grabbing the opportunity presented, Tripitaka turned to Kaedo. 

“Maybe you should help him,” she suggested, as pointedly as she could without actively drawing his attention to the restless Monkey.

Kaedo, either earnestly oblivious or else just trying to be difficult, merely frowned. “Nah, I think he’s—”

Tripitaka cleared her throat, even more pointedly. “She’s a _difficult child_ , Kaedo. I’m sure _Pigsy_ could use some _help_.”

“Oh!” There, at last: he got it. “Right! Yeah, of course. You know, it definitely takes two people to stop a toddler from poisoning herself. It’s been, like, proven, and... I’m just going to leave now.”

And then, blessedly, he did.

And then, not so blessedly, it was just her and the pint-sized Monkey King.

Knowing all too well Monkey’s tendency to wander off when he sensed a pending interrogation, Tripitaka didn’t waste time with small-talk. As soon as she was certain the others weren’t going to return any time soon, she patted the empty space beside her, looked Monkey in the eye, and said, “Feel ready to talk about it yet?”

His abrasive, guttural laughter was as painful as it was predictable.

“Pfft.” Another laugh, this one rather more ragged-sounding. “ _No_.”

Still, for all his defiance, he took the offered seat without objection. He hunched his shoulders as he sat down, twisting his fingers in his lap, and kept about a hand’s space of distance between them. Tripitaka, making no move to close the space, watched him only out of the corner of her eye. She didn’t push or try to break through the boundaries he set up; she sat back, made a show keeping her head turned away, and carefully put into practice the patience she should have used last time.

“Okay,” she said, pretending to keep her gaze on the treeline. “We don’t have to, if you don’t—”

“Fine!” Clamping his mouth shut on that outburst, Monkey squirmed. “I mean... um... maybe?”

Tripitaka hummed, hid her smile, and pressed him as gently as she could. “Maybe?”

“ _Maybe_. Okay, sure. Fine. _Whatever_.” He folded his arms across his chest, and when Tripitaka trusted the moment not to shatter and chanced a glance at his face she found him glaring broodily at his boots. But only because I’m _really_ bored, okay?”

Tripitaka let just the faintest flicker of her smile shine through.

“I think,” she said, “that’s the best possible reason for talking.”

*

She let him set his own pace.

Minutes of silence, then a fractured word or two, then pouting and muttering sourly to himself, then glowering into the fire, wringing his hands in his lap, bracing himself to begin again. It felt like hours before he mustered a full sentence — and even then, a short one — but still Tripitaka held her tongue, still she let him set his own pace, sharing only what he felt comfortable with. 

Still, at last, she showed patience.

“You were right,” he growled at last, eyes still locked on the dancing flames. “Said that part already, right? You need to hear it again or something?”

“No.” Gently, patiently; it was harder than it should have been to keep from reaching out and trying to offer comfort in physical touch. A hand on his shoulder, a brush against his arm, anything to let him know he did not have to go through this all by himself. “I don’t need to hear anything you’re not comfortable talking about.”

Monkey grunted, like he didn’t really believe that. “Whatever,” he muttered, for the dozenth time that minute. “It’s all stupid anyway. This world and its dumb humans. I bet they deserved what the demons done to them.”

“No, they didn’t!” She bit down on the inside of her cheek, fighting again for restraint, for control, for power over her fraying temper. “The humans who live in this world have suffered terribly.” A brief glance at the others, Pigsy and Kaedo trying to engage with a listless-looking Sandy, and all of a sudden she had to bite down on a different emotion entirely. “The gods too. No-one deserves to suffer like that, Monkey, no matter their deeds.”

Monkey considered that for a beat, then peered at her with a strange, hopeful look in his eyes. “No-one?”

“No-one.” She knew what he was really asking, and she did not hesitate to reassure him. “Not them, and not you either. The humans of this world... they’re no more right to blame you than you are to lash out at them. Your hurt is valid too.”

“Is it?”

With the layers of bravado and ego stripped away, he suddenly sounded very small. Looking at him, watching the tears glimmering behind his dark eyes, Tripitaka could almost forget the vast and terrible power he carried inside of him, could almost forget the arrogance and attitude, the thousand or more very good reasons why the crown on his head had been enchanted with magic to subdue him. There was no King in this Monkey, at least not right now; there was only a boy, sad and hurting and wondering if he had any right to be.

“Yeah,” she told him, ever so softly. “It is.”

Monkey swallowed hard, then shook his head, bending forward a little so that the coiffed tresses of his hair fell over his eyes. Hiding his face, hiding his heart as well. Hiding, just like Sandy did when she was full-grown and struggling with emotions every bit as complex and confusing as these.

“They said I did awful things,” he whispered, haunted and horrified. “Way worse than what you said I did. Way worse than just stealing some dumb crown. They said I... they said...”

He didn’t finish, but it didn’t matter. Tripitaka had read the texts and the histories, had even watched it play out in real-time at the breaking ground; she knew what he was talking about.

His Master. Slain by a demon’s hand, the most terrible betrayal. Slain by a demon, yes, but that wasn’t the version that Monkey would have heard about in this nightmarish new world.

The Monkey King: stealer of scrolls, traitor to the gods. Slayer of his teacher, his mentor, his Master.

She hated it. She hated that horrified, haunted look on his face. She hated that he’d had to hear the story — ‘history’, twisted into untruths — from strangers, hated that she had lacked the courage and the time to fill in this part for him herself. She hated, most of all, that he probably believed what he’d heard, that this young, vulnerable version of Monkey had no way to know the difference between what was told and what was truth.

She hated herself, because this too was all her fault.

“I know what they said,” she said. “But it’s not true.”

“They showed me books,” he cried, not even trying to hide the tremors in his voice. “Old books. Big stupid books and big stupid scrolls, with big stupid words. And I couldn’t read them ’cause reading’s stupid, but they told me what they said, they _told me_...”

“Books and scrolls don’t know everything,” Tripitaka said, speaking slowly and carefully to try and keep them both calm. “And neither do humans.”

“So they _are_ liars?” His fingers flexed in his lap, muscles twitching under the supple leather of his clothes, as though he was fighting to keep from leaping up to his feet and driving his fist through the nearest solid object. “I knew it! Lying liars, all of them. Humans always lie, it’s what they do. You know, ’cause they can’t do nothing else.” He nodded decisively. “And they _do_ deserve what they got.”

Tripitaka grimaced. His passion was a comfort, a return to something familiar, but it was unjustified and there was something deeply unsettling about the way he spat the word ‘humans’, the loathing and vitriol seething on his tongue. Monkey had always been disdainful of humans, had always seen them as something beneath him; even when he was his older, more worldly self, he curled his lip sometimes when he said the word, but this was different. This was almost hateful.

“They’re not liars,” Tripitaka said, firmly now in defense of her own people. “They just don’t have the same access to your past that we do. They weren’t there, they have no way of knowing that their history books are founded on—”

“Lies!”

“—on a _misunderstanding_.” She closed her eyes, slowed and steadied her breath, then pressed on with the careful, calculated weight of a confession. “It’s a long story. A long, painful, messy, horrible story, and one that I should have told you long before now.”

Monkey growled low in his throat, rippling with the moody, somewhat comical affront that came so naturally to children when they felt they’d been wronged. “So why didn’t you?”

A good question, but one without a simple answer. What meagre excuses Tripitaka could think of — _you were upset, you didn’t give me a chance, you were already calling your cloud before I could get a word out_ — felt hollow and weak before she even tested them on her tongue. She couldn’t bear the thought of having to watch his face fall, having to watch the anger ignite behind his dark eyes, having to watch him walk away again, so sure that she was lying to him as well.

Untruths and half-truths had hurt him enough, she decided; he deserved honesty, even if it would hurt them both.

“I was trying to protect you,” she started, then sighed and shook her head. “And myself too, I suppose. Because this... I’ve already seen it, Monkey. You waking up and finding yourself in a dark new world that blames you for all its suffering. You learning all the terrible, horrible, unspeakable things they think you did, seeing all the cruel colours that history painted you in. I saw you go through it once, and it was bad enough... and that was a version of you who had lived the truth for himself and knew they had it wrong.”

Monkey turned away with a low, rumble-like noise. For a beat or two, Tripitaka thought he was fighting a wave of anger; his fists clenched again in his lap, and his jaw was clenched so tight she was sure it hurt. It was only when she heard him choke back a sob that she realised it was another emotion entirely that had him in its claws now, and one he was trying to fight down just as desperately as if it really had been anger.

She wished he wouldn’t. Like Sandy, swallowing her tears until they burned in her blood instead, tainting her powers, spilling out against her will, Monkey stifled his now too, scrubbing at his face, turning away, growling and balling his fists, swallowing them all down, salt-stung and sniffling and so, so stubborn. Like Sandy before him, Tripitaka wished he could understand there was no shame in letting them out.

“They said I _killed_ him,” he rasped, when he finally found his voice. “They said I...”

“I know.” Tripitaka knew better than to try and touch him now. “I know they did.”

He turned back, eyes wide and wet, a lone tear making its way down the side of his face. “Why would they say that if it’s not true? Why would it be in all those stupid books and scrolls and whatever if it’s not true?”

“Because they _believe_ it’s true.” She shuffled back a little way, giving him the space to lash out, or to turn away and cry some more in private, or to do whatever he needed to do. “Because the gods believed it too.”

That struck a nerve. He paled, eyes going wide, looking for a moment like he was on the brink of collapse.

“No.” The word was a whimper, making him sound even younger than he already was. “Not gods. Humans, sure. Whatever. They’re dumb and they’ll believe anything or they’ll just lie about it anyway. But not gods.” His voice broke on the word, but he didn’t seem to notice. “They know me. They know me and they know I’m awesome and they know, they know, they _know_ that I would never, ever, _ever_...”

He didn’t turn away this time. Perhaps he couldn’t move at all. But his shoulders started shaking, and the lone tear staining his cheek was swiftly joined by another, and another, and then he pressed his face into his hands and started to sob.

Tripitaka let it happen. Wordlessly, respectfully, she sat there and did not move, did not try to offer the comfort she so desperately wanted to give, the comfort she knew he would resist. She sat there, as she knew he would want her to, watching the fire and pretending she didn’t hear the ragged rasp of his voice, the body-shaking howls as he bawled not like the wild, righteously furious god he would grow up to be but like the little boy he was, the wisp of a child who was so much more powerful than anyone his age should be and woefully unprepared for the horrors those powers would one day bring.

She waited, unmoving and unspeaking, until he was finished, until the tears were all shed, until the sobs had subsided to sniffles and then to slow sighs, until he was ready to be seen again. She waited until he raised his head back up, until he found her gaze and held it, until he unclenched his jaw and slowly, ever so slowly, nodded his head.

“It’s okay,” she said, then, with all the empathy the Scholar had instilled in her, all the kindness and compassion that this horrible, unjust world had not and would not take from her. “It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not,” he said. His voice was hoarse and rusted from crying, but this time it barely trembled at all. “It doesn’t even matter if it was true or not. Not if the other gods think it was.”

There was so much pain in his voice, so much more still burning behind his eyes, and Tripitaka suspected that pain ran deeper than he even himself knew. She remembered, vivid and unwanted, witnessing his memories at the breaking ground, his superiority complex bleeding out into bitterness towards his fellow gods, the way he sneered when he spoke about them to Davari. He never really belonged there, he said with acid on his tongue. He wasn’t really like them, he said. They didn’t—

She remembered, too, the way he scowled at little Sandy, back at the river. Sneering again, defensive and sullen when Tripitaka brought up the little girl’s absent family, and much worse when she brought up his.

 _“Don’t want a dumb, stupid family anyway,”_ he’d muttered then, and there it was, over and over again, the same word. _Stupid, stupid, stupid_ , like he could somehow convince himself it was true if he repeated it enough times.

It wasn’t true, she realised now. No more than he could ever have truly killed his Master in cold blood; he had called the man his teacher, had laughed bitterly when Tripitaka suggested they might be family, but she could see it now reflected in his eyes, as clear as the fading daylight: that particular colour of pain behind his anger, that particular shade of grief she knew so well herself, the jagged blade burying itself between her ribs every time she thought of the Scholar.

Whether he’d admit it or not, the Master was his family. And whether he’d admit it or not, he felt the same way about the other gods on Jade Mountain. He wanted so badly to see them that way, to fill with his peers the void that came from having no parents or siblings of his own, from being born all alone in the middle of nowhere, hatched from an egg with no-one to claim him or feed him or swaddle him, not a soul to even give him a name.

More than just being rejected by the world of humans, suddenly it was brutally personal: he had been rejected by the closest thing to a family he’d ever known, the closest he’d ever allowed himself to want. His fellow gods, the students who’d trained with him, his Master and the other teachers, the great, glorious world at the top of that enormous palace, reserved for the best and most powerful.

He resented them, looked down on them, sneered at them, yes: he did all of those things without remorse. But hadn’t he done all of those things to her as well, and to Pigsy and Sandy and anyone else that got close to him? Tripitaka hadn’t known him so well back then, when she saw his memories in the breaking ground. She hadn’t recognised those behaviours then, but she recognised them now and she understood what they meant.

She saw it all now. Not just her Monkey, older and more worldly, but this younger one as well. This little boy, tearful and upset and so angry that the few souls in the world he’d let himself care about would be so quick to turn around and believe a lie, cast him out like he meant nothing to them, _abandon_ him, just like—

Again, Tripitaka saw a ghost of Sandy in Monkey’s dark, wet eyes.

Again, she saw so many similarities between them, this boy who would never admit he felt anything and the confused, broken god that bright-eyed little toddler would grow up into. Both of them rejected, both of them abandoned, both cast out by the only souls they believed would ever love them.

Monkey, who had convinced himself that he was unbeatable, indestructible, untouchable, who had convinced himself that he didn’t need or want anyone, that he was the only one in the world worthy of his own attention. Monkey, who would never admit that he’d ever felt a moment’s loneliness in his life, looking at her now with a child’s tears streaming down his face. Monkey, angry and hurting and feeling so much, so strongly, and Sandy—

Sandy, who had apparently escaped her babysitters and was presently tugging on Monkey’s trouser-leg.

Monkey scowled down at her, scrubbing the tears from his face with closed fists. “What is it now, brat?”

“Monkey,” she said, high and hopeful, like she was trying to cheer him up with the sound of his name. “Monkey, Monkey, Mon _key_.”

Tripitaka winced. “Sandy, this isn’t a good time. Why don’t you run back to Pigsy and Kaedo now, hm?”

Rather predictably, Sandy ignored her. She tugged on Monkey’s clothes a couple more times, then, when she was absolutely sure she had his undivided attention, she held up her little fish like it were the most priceless artefact in the whole world.

“For you,” she explained, when he didn’t immediately take it.

Monkey rolled his eyes at the thing, dirt-scuffed and misshapen and looking rather the worse for its many adventures. “That’s yours,” he said, in the faint, distant tone of someone who wasn’t really sure what was happening and didn’t particularly care either. “Like, you say it a zillion times a day. _Mine, mine, mine_. Remember that?”

Despite being entirely too young to return his eye-roll, Sandy nonetheless made a passable feint at mimicking it.

“Stupid,” she grumbled, then shoved the thing at him yet again, with more urgency. “For _you_. ’Cause you’re _sad_.”

Monkey blinked a couple of times, with confusion.

Then he blinked many more times, much more rapidly, with something entirely different.

“Oh,” he breathed, so softly Tripitaka almost didn’t hear.

This time, when Sandy held out the dirty, badly-made little toy, he took it with a smile.

“Thanks, br—” he started, then amended, “Sandy.”

Sandy nodded, flopped down at his feet, and resumed her now-characteristic silence.

Tripitaka watched them both, smiling and swallowing down tears of her own. She wanted to reach over and hug Sandy, or possibly just to ruffle her hair, to show some appreciation of her thoughtfulness, the boundless generosity of giving up her most cherished treasure to make someone else feel better, surrendering without a thought the only thing in the world that had made her feel safe since this began. It was so much like the Sandy she knew, so kind and touching; there was nothing in the world Tripitaka wanted more than to touch her and thank her, but she didn’t know if the contact would be welcome.

To Monkey, she pointed at the silly little toy, and the not-so-silly little girl who had given it to him, and said, with all the warmth and love in her heart, “You’ve got us.”

Monkey, still a little shell-shocked, only grunted. “Hmph.”

“You’ve got _us_ ,” Tripitaka said again. She would say it a thousand times, she thought fiercely, if that was what it took to make him hear and accept it. “Me and her and Pigsy. We know you, and we know what’s true.”

Another grunt from Monkey. For a second, Tripitaka thought he was going to argue, but then he looked down at the little fish in his hands, worthless to anyone except the one who’d so willingly given it away, and he said, in a reverent sort of hush, “I guess so.”

Tripitaka smiled, reaching out to rest a hand on his arm. Slim and undefined, as with all children, its frailty felt so strange she almost didn’t recognise it as Monkey at all; when she squeezed, she felt the muscle give way beneath her fingers.

He was the most powerful god in the world, but under her hand and under her gaze he seemed so achingly fragile.

“We know you,” she told him again, squeezing his arm in rhythm with her words. “We know who you are. We know you’re a good god—”

Monkey coughed. He wasn’t crying any more, but he still sounded choked up. “Not just good,” he croaked with a shaky smirk. “The _best_.”

Tripitaka ignored that, as best she could while smiling shakily back.

“We know you’re a good god,” she said again, “and we know you’re a good _person_.” She squeezed his arm again, playfully this time, and pressed on. “We know what’s true, we know what’s real, and we believe in you. We’re fighting, the four of us together, to make sure the rest of the world gets the chance to learn it too. We’re your friends, Monkey, and whether you want one or not, we’re your family.”

Monkey snorted at that, but there was a tremulous, tearful note to the sound that said she’d maybe broken through to him after all.

“Family,” he muttered, curling his lip in a way that was so forced, so exaggerated, he must surely realise it wasn’t going to fool anyone. Indeed, he could barely hold the sneer for a fraction of a second before it dissolved, replaced by a fractured, hesitant, desperately hopeful, “Really?”

“Yeah,” Tripitaka whispered, with all the warmth and sincerity in her overflowing heart. “Really.”

Monkey studied her for a beat, intense and strangely serious. He seemed to be seeing her for the first time — really, truly seeing her — not as a ‘stupid human’ but as a monk, as his friend, as someone who cared about him and was worthy not just of his attention but his affection as well.

He looked down at Sandy, then, as well, clinging to his leg and looking up at the fish in his hands, adoration gleaming in her big, bright eyes. Then he looked across the camp, to where Pigsy and Kaedo were not-at-all-casually inching their way towards the edge of the copse, no doubt looking to give the three of them some much-needed privacy. He looked around, taking in everything and everyone around him, the new world that hated him and the new family that did not.

Tripitaka watched him take it all in, the friend by his side, the one at his feet, the others keeping a respectful distance because they knew it was what he needed them to do. She watched him learn in the space of a moment what it had taken his older self the best part of a year to accept: that he had fallen into something more permanent than a quest, that he had found a place, a home, a family that would not let him go, and that maybe... maybe...

“Maybe,” he said, smiling for the first time with no trace of arrogance, “it’s not such a stupid thing after all.”

*


	11. Chapter 11

*

Unsurprisingly, after that, it didn’t take long at all for Monkey to return to his delightfully annoying older self.

Somewhat more surprisingly, given his general nature, he was less dramatic about it than Pigsy had been.

A sudden groan, the kind that might accompany a minor bout of indigestion, a full-body shudder that was over almost as quickly as it begun, and there he was: tall, well-muscled, perfect-haired _Monkey_ , in all his arrogant and easy-going glory.

He stood there in front of her, looking rather more bemused than confused, blinking down at the shredded remains of his younger self’s clothing and trying with little success to cover his modesty.

“Uh...” He coughed, dislodging the rust from his throat. “Do I want to know?”

Probably not, in truth. And if she was being completely honest with herself, Tripitaka didn’t really want to have to sit down and explain it all over again either.

“It’s a long story,” she sighed, for what felt like the hundredth time.

Monkey rolled his eyes at that, understandably a little irritable. He opened his mouth, no doubt to ask if there was a short version for the easily-distracted, but froze before he could get the words out, seeming to seize up for a second and then gaping down at his feet with pure, unbridled horror.

“What,” he asked, with the breathless, trying-to-hold-still panic of one faced with a deadly, venomous snake, “is _that_?”

On following his terror-stricken gaze downwards, Tripitaka was not the least bit surprised to discover that he was talking about Sandy. Still sitting at their feet, she was staring up at the newly-normalised Monkey King, her expression a perfect mirror of his wide-eyed, panicked confusion. She looked — again, rather understandably — like she was trying to figure out who in the world this new stranger was, how he’d come to be here, and where he had hidden the Monkey she knew.

“What’s _that_ ,” she echoed, poking at the few stray scraps of boot-leather that still covered Monkey’s foot.

Monkey leaped back like she’d just tried to set him on fire, features twisting, like he was using up every ounce of his self-control to keep from drawing his staff and smacking her with it like he would a stray rat.

“Seriously,” he said to Tripitaka in a low whine. “What is that thing, and why is it staring at me like that?”

Swallowing down the laughter that desperately wanted to escape, Tripitaka took a deep breath, counted very slowly to ten, then hoisted the squirming, suspicious Sandy up into her arms and held her out for Monkey to examine from his safe, cowardly distance.

“Monkey,” she said, enunciating each syllable clearly and with great care, in the vain hope that the name would attach itself to something familiar in the anxious toddler’s mind. “This is Sandy.”

Monkey blinked.

Sandy blinked right back at him.

Monkey blinked at Tripitaka.

“Did you... uh, did you just say...”

Tripitaka nodded, caught between another wave of suppressed laughter and a deep, weary sigh, and politely repeated herself. “Monkey, this is Sandy. Sandy...” She inched forward a couple of steps, still holding her up, this time so that she could look at him. “This is Monkey.”

Sandy cocked her head to the side, studied him for nearly a full minute — Tripitaka supposed she found it entertaining, the way he was gawking with his mouth hanging open, staring at her like she was something worse than a demon — then, apparently having seen enough to make an informed decision, she shook her head and stated with absolute conviction:

“Nuh _uh_.”

That snapped him out of his shock. He bristled, flashed her a glare that could have frozen even a full-grown god in place, and snarled, “Listen, you little...”

“Monkey!” Tripitaka set Sandy back down, scrambling hastily to put herself between them. “She’s a child!”

“She’s a _brat_.”

That broke through to her, rather more effectively than his name. Recognising the insult his younger self had used so often to describe her, she brightened, broke into a big, beaming smile, and wobbled forward to attach herself once again to his leg.

“Monkey!” she squealed, unfettered in her delight. “Monkey, Monkey, _Monkey_!”

Monkey, being considerably less delighted by the sound of his name now that he was himself again, panicked.

“Get it off me!” he yowled, struggling without success to extricate himself from her clinging clutches. “I don’t care who it is, monk, just get the little nightmare away from me!”

Dropping her head into her hands, swallowing back the urge to groan in simultaneous amusement and despair, Tripitaka had to admit that this was a far less jarring transformation than Pigsy’s had been; Monkey was so much like his younger self, melodramatic and overblown in everything he did, if she didn’t know him so well she might have wondered if he’d really changed back at all.

“Monkey,” she said, raising her voice to drown out his frantic caterwauling. “It’s Sandy. She’s not going to hurt you.”

“She’s tiny,” he shot back, still struggling to yank himself free. “She’s a tiny little ball of tiny squishy little human parts. It’s _me_ hurting _her_ that I’m worried about!”

 _Oh_.

Tripitaka tried to process this, with about as much success as Monkey seemed to be having in processing the entire situation. Which was to say, not very much at all.

Monkey’s younger self had been so careless and cavalier in the way he’d handled Sandy — and, indeed, anything else that came within his grabby little reach — she hadn’t really taken into account his strength and her fragility. But then, perhaps this was one of the few places where he really had matured with age; Monkey had always been a kind of living tornado, happy to plow through anyone or anything if he thought it would save himself the least little bit of inconvenience, but he with humans he always showed at least some measure of restraint. He would shove past them, yes, subdue or pin them down if necessary, but he would never do them harm unless he had no other choice.

Another one of the many ways he saw humans as beneath him; in this Monkey, at least, it manifested in gentleness and restraint. After his younger self, acid-tongued and punctuating each syllable of the word with bitter venom, it was a nice reprieve.

She hadn’t given it much thought before now, the way he held back when dealing with her kind. She’d never stopped to think about how much control it must demand of him, so powerful and so untempered so much of the time, to hold himself in check against people so much weaker than himself in almost every imaginable way.

Perhaps, she mused with a twinge of regret, she hadn’t given him enough credit for that.

As impulsive and immature as he could be sometimes, it hadn’t occurred to her that perhaps maturity and restraint held different meanings for a god like him, that perhaps he was coming from a different place than the likes of Pigsy, forced to grow up before his time, thrown into combat when all he wanted was to be kind and gentle. Monkey, born alone and becoming the Master’s star student at such a young age, knew only how to be reliant on himself and how to be spoiled by others.

This Monkey, centuries older and wiser than his younger counterpart, remembered too well the fateful encounter that had cost his mentor his life. He knew the terrible price that came with losing control of his powers and his impulses; he’d paid for them in grief and blood.

Tripitaka looked at him now with new eyes, seeing him from both sides, as she had never been able to before now: the old and the young, the jaded and the idealistic, the boy who had only ever received praise and adulation for his strength and power, and the full-grown god who had learned the hard way what dreadful harm those things could wreak.

She said, to both of those versions of him, “You won’t hurt her, Monkey. I trust you.”

Monkey opened his mouth as though to argue by instinct, presuming as he so often did that she was trying to counter him somehow, then snapped it shut when he realised what she’d actually said.

“You do?” Off her nod, he glanced back down at Sandy, not quite softening yet but notably less uneasy and struggling rather less hard in his efforts to disentangle himself. “And it’s really... her?”

“Sandy, yes. It... that is, she... I mean, there was a...” She sighed, then followed Kaedo’s example and simply said, “Wish-fulfilment magic.”

Much as it had been with Kaedo and Pigsy, this did not seem to be new information, even to the notoriously ignorant Monkey. He blinked a couple of times, mouthing the words slowly to himself as he pieced them together, and then, as if someone had pressed a button inside him, his entire body relaxed with a relieved, drawn-out, “ _Ohhhh_.”

Tripitaka clenched her teeth. 

“Seriously?” she muttered under her breath. “I’m more well-read than all four of you put together. How am I the only one who doesn’t know about this stuff?”

“Too much time with your head in books,” Monkey shrugged, overhearing despite her best efforts to keep her voice low. “No lived experience. Happens to all you nerdy scholarly types.”

“Right. And how much wish-fulfilment magic do _you_ have ‘lived experience’ with?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” He smirked, winked, then waved the point aside with his usual cheerful indifference. Seizing on the same method of distraction as his younger self, he turned his attention back to Sandy, picking her up and holding her up in front of his face to get a better look at her. “Hi there, little water weirdo!”

Never one to waste an opportunity to emasculate him, Sandy booped his nose and declared, “Stupid!”

Monkey glared, first at her, then at Tripitaka. “Did that little monster just...?”

“Don’t blame her,” Tripitaka snickered. “You’re the one who taught her that.”

“I... wait, hold up, what?”

Tripitaka winced. “It’s...”

“A long story. Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time.” He held Sandy high over his head, bouncing her and fussing over her and generally making her squirmy and irritable. “Give me the quick and short version. You know, the version for genius gods like me who have better things to do with their time than sit around listening to eight-hour lectures or whatever.”

Of course. Because in Monkey’s mind there was a quick, short, easily-explained version of everything.

If only that were true, Tripitaka thought, floundering to shrink down a day’s worth of disasters into a few sentences short enough to hold his attention.

The short version, then: that all three gods had been affected by Sandy’s wish-fulfilment magic, that they had all regressed to their younger selves, small and vulnerable and afraid, forced to face difficult truths that no child should have to.

The short version: that Monkey, even more wild-spirited in his youth than in his later years, had been thrown head-first into a world more than a thousand years in his future, a world that had twisted his name — the name he loved so well — into something almost worse than the demons who now ruled it.

The short version: that he had wept, loudly and openly, at the thought of being cast out from Jade Mountain, the idea that his fellow gods would unquestioningly believe him responsible for his Master’s death, that just the thought of such a thing had reduced him to inconsolable sobbing.

The short version: that this, them, a family who believed in him — the very source of so much of his derision, both young and old — had been the very thing that had brought him back to himself, the secret wish that perhaps even he hadn’t realised he’d been keeping.

Not so short at all, and certainly not easy to explain.

Still, because it was Monkey and his short attention-span was as much the stuff of legends as his prowess in combat, she made an attempt.

“You were a child too,” she told him, studying his face carefully. “Older than her, but much more trouble. You threw half a dozen tantrums, cried a little, then you got better. That short enough?”

He mulled that over for a beat or two, mouthing the syllables like little Sandy did when she stumbled upon a particularly difficult word or concept. Then, when he was finished thinking on it, he shrugged, freed up one hand so he could poke Sandy’s nose in retaliation, and said, “Sure.”

Tripitaka blinked, a little thrown. “Really?”

“Why not?” he asked with a careless shrug.

“You don’t want more details or anything?”

“You’re the details person,” he said, weaving and bobbing his head as Sandy tried to smack it; clearly, he was far more interested in playing with her than learning about the chaos he’d missed. “I’m the getting-stuff-done person. I’m me again now, right? Just as handsome and awesome as I ever was. That’s the only part that matters, so who cares about stupid details?”

Tripitaka laughed, hoarse and heartfelt.

“Come to think of it,” she said, feeling the familiar warmth settle behind her ribs, “you never really changed at all.”

Monkey, being Monkey, only preened.

*

A while later, long enough to be unobtrusive, Pigsy and Kaedo returned from their self-imposed exile.

They picked their moment carefully, and very well. No doubt they were both savvy enough to recognise that the deep emotions had more or less run their course, and that they would no longer be intruding on anything by reappearing. As much as she’d appreciated their absence while Monkey worked through his feelings and subsequent transformation, Tripitaka was twice as glad to have them back, all five of them in one place, adults and children and everything in between, all where she could see them.

It was only when she saw their twin forms shuffle back through the brush — Pigsy’s massive bulk and Kaedo’s small, lithe frame, a lively and amusing juxtaposition — that she realised how unconsciously worried she’d been, how aware of the silences where their voices should have been.

It was getting darker, evening falling fast, and though she was mostly sure the nearby forest had been cleared of all its demon-aligned denizens, still it seemed that her nerves were on edge.

If they noticed, they didn’t remark on it. Indeed, they barely paid her any mind at all.

“Good to see you back,” Pigsy said to Monkey, by way of greeting. His tone was light, carrying the playful mockery that characterised most of their conversations, but there was a softness to his grin that he seemed almost to not realise was there. “You good now, Monkey Kid?”

Monkey snorted, but he too seemed a little softer than usual. “We’re _not_ talking about this.”

“It’s a shame, really,” Kaedo mused, flashing a wicked grin that he could only have learned from Monkey’s younger self. “I was kind of enjoying being taller than you for a change.”

Monkey laughed. “As if that would ever happen, short stuff.”

“Oh, it happened.” The grin sharpened hungrily. “And you’re welcome for the clothes, by the way. Mini-Monkey has the worst fashion sense I’ve ever seen in anyone ever.”

Tripitaka shook her head, letting their jibes roll over her like the comfortable, familiar background noise it was. She felt good, warmer and safer than she had in a very ong time, balmed by the clashing voices, Monkey’s irritability, Pigsy’s amusement, Kaedo’s wry cynicism. Sitting there, watching them argue and antagonise each other as they had so many countless times before, she could almost imagine that the world was back to the way it should be, everything and everyone in their proper place. She could almost convince herself the hard part was over.

 _Almost_.

But there was still Sandy, nestled between Monkey’s big booted feet, hugging her fish to her chest and looking around herself with a miserable nervousness that grew more and more obvious as the sky became darker.

That nervousness was only going to get worse as the night fell, Tripitaka could tell. And she was no closer to figuring out how to connect with the poor girl now than she had been before Monkey returned to his old self.

She had a sneaking suspicion it was going to be a very difficult night.

Kaedo, no doubt also noticing the way Sandy was paling and twitching, remarked in a low, private undertone, “She’s getting scared again.” 

“I can see that,” Tripitaka hissed back tersely.

“You really need to figure out a way to change her back,” he pressed, either not noticing her tone or else wilfully ignoring it, “or she’s going to cause a lot of trouble.”

Tripitaka gritted her teeth. “I know—”

“No, she won’t.” This breezy interruption came from Monkey, just as carefree and dismissive as Tripitaka would have expected him to be. “She’s way more trouble when she’s her usual sewer-brained self. I say we keep her like this.”

Pigsy’s spluttering cough did little to mask his snicker. “You see?” he said to Tripitaka. “Didn’t I say exactly the same thing?”

Tripitaka made a show of ignoring them both. That warm, homely feeling was swiftly starting to evaporate, leaving her with a sensation more akin to nausea, and she could not see the humour that they did in a situation so dangerously close to becoming real. If she didn’t figure out how to connect and communicate on Sandy’s level, if she didn’t swallow down her own fear and pain and talk that twitching, trembling toddler through her terrible future, none of them would be laughing or making jokes, and none of them would be asking to keep her like this: they would have no choice.

Swallowing hard, feeling the nausea thicken to panic, she lurched to her feet.

“Can you watch her for a bit?” she said to Monkey, barely able to get the words out through the involuntary clenching of her jaw and throat. “I’m going to, uh...” She swallowed again, hoping he wouldn’t hear the quaver in her voice, hoping he was still self-involved enough to miss it. “To gather firewood. I’m going to go and gather firewood. So, uh... watch her while I do that?”

For just a moment, it seemed like he really wouldn’t notice. He grunted his affirmation, barely acknowledging the request at all, but just as she thought she might have escaped without scrutiny, he looked up and saw her face, and his own features grew dark with worry.

For all that he enjoyed playing up his reputation of being blind to others’ feelings, Monkey was not as oblivious as he seemed; Tripitaka had no doubt he could see all the discomfort and doubt flooding in to darken her skin, evident even in the gathering gloom of evening, even in the murky shade of trees. He knew better than to try and confront her about it in public, but still, she could tell he saw.

“Sure,” he said, frowning hesitantly. “Say, uh, are you—”

“Yeah.” She turned away, ostensibly to scour the treeline for demons they all knew were no longer there. “Of course.”

Much, _much_ smarter than he looked, he did not press her.

“Want some company?” Pigsy offered, shrewd but making a show of sounding like he hadn’t noticed a thing. “I don’t expect you’ll run into any more trouble out there, but best to be safe, don’t you think? Recent events being what they are and all that.”

Tripitaka winced. He made a good point, of course, though she could tell it was just a cover so that he could offer his company — an ear, a shoulder, anything she needed — as well as the protection. A good point, yes, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow, or any easier to politely reject.

She didn’t want company, and she didn’t want protection, not from Pigsy, not from Monkey. She wanted to be alone, to catch her breath and catch her thoughts, to not have to look at little Sandy and see all the not-so-little ways she’d let her down and all the bigger ways she might yet do so again, to not have to look at Monkey and see how much like his younger self he still was, or look at Pigsy and see how completely he had changed over the hours that were centuries.

She didn’t want to deal with any of them. She just wanted a few minutes by herself, a few minutes to not have all their eyes on her, seeking explanations or seeking safety or seeking some way to undo what Sandy had wrought on herself, like she wasn’t just as helpless as the whimpering toddler, like she wasn’t just as prone to overreact as young Monkey had been, like she wasn’t just as shy and self-conscious as young Pigsy, like she didn’t — like all three of them — just want someone else to do it all for her.

She looked at Pigsy, glowing with good intentions and kindness and compassion, and floundered for a kind way to turn him down.

“I...”

Blessedly, that was as far as she got.

“I’ll go,” Kaedo volunteered, cutting her off with a grin that said he knew exactly what she was struggling with, and why. “You two stay here and babysit. Make yourselves useful now you’re all big and strong again.”

Pigsy shrugged, seeming not to care one way or the other, so long as their resident human wasn’t out there wandering through the forest all on her own. Monkey, being preoccupied now with trying to see how many stones he could stack on Sandy’s head before she got wise and shook them off, grunted and waved a hand, as though surprised they were still there at all.

Good enough, she thought grudgingly. And if she had to make the compromise, she supposed Kaedo, was a more palatable choice of companion than either of the gods; he, at least, had been completely himself all the way through this ordeal.

“Fine,” she said, grumblingly gracious. “But if you make even one wisecrack about how I can’t even gather firewood properly...”

“Not a word,” Kaedo promised with a grin. “Promise.”

Because it made her smile, Tripitaka pretended not to notice the fact that he’d crossed his fingers behind his back.

*

It was. ultimately, a wasted promise. 

As soon as they were alone, Kaedo made it clear he had other reasons for wanting to join her, and far less altruistic ones than Pigsy’s offer of companionship and protection. Kaedo, shrewd and clever despite his youth, didn’t even bother waiting for her to indulge the pretence of gathering wood; he knew just as well as she did that it was a ruse, a hastily-scrambled excuse to get away from the others and her burdens.

He didn’t indulge her like Pigsy would have, and he was not self-obsessed and cheerfully oblivious like Monkey would have been. He alone would not coddle her out here, so it was no surprise when, rather than looking around for wood they both knew they did not need, he simply stopped dead in the midst of the forest and stood there staring at her with his hands on his hips.

Tripitaka did not rise to his bait.

“If you feel like actually helping,” she muttered, knowing full well that he wouldn’t rise to hers either, “that would be lovely.”

Kaedo didn’t budge. She hadn’t really expected him to, no more than he probably expected her to give in and spill her guts.

“I know what you’re doing,” he said, holding his ground.

Tripitaka dug her heels in, held her own just as doggedly.

“I should hope so,” she said, letting just a hint of sourness taint her voice. “I’m gathering firewood. You know, just like I announced to the whole group? So we won’t all freeze to death in our bedrolls when the night rolls in and—”

“Please.” There was no mirth in his bitten-off laugh; it was as bitter as her tone. “You’re _hiding_.”

Tripitaka tried to return his laugh with one of her own, but the sound caught in her throat and would not be dislodged. “I don’t need to hide,” she snapped. “Monkey and Pigsy are their old selves again, remember? Assuming there’s even any demons left who might still be coming for us — which there probably aren’t — they have no idea what they’re in for.”

“Right.” He rolled his eyes, looking more and more adult by the moment; it made Tripitaka feel younger than she was, and more petulant as well. “You know, for the chosen saviour of humanity, you’re a really bad liar.”

Tripitaka bristled, at the title of ‘saviour’ almost as much as the slight. “This from the boy whose voice hasn’t even broken yet?” Her attempted sneer was, by her own admission, rather lacklustre. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t take life advice from the boy who couldn’t even rein in Monkey’s ego when he was smaller than you.”

Kaedo’s bitter smirk fell off his face, replaced with something much darker.

“Me?” he shot back, anger rising to his colour his cheeks. “You’re the one who couldn’t even control him with the crown sutra at your fingertips.” He spat the word, then fixed her with a cold glare. “Oh, wait, my mistake: you _could_. You just didn’t have the courage to actually use the stupid thing.”

“I wasn’t going to inflict crippling pain on a child, Kaedo!” What little wood she’d made a feint of gathering clattered uselessly to the ground as she countered his glare with one of her own. “It’s nothing to be proud of, having no compassion for other people.”

“Nothing to be proud of to have too much of the stuff, either,” he retorted, arms folded to hide his clenching fists. “Maybe if you had a little less, you might’ve actually knocked some sense into your useless god friend _before_ she wished herself into a tiny, even more useless version of herself.”

Tripitaka’s fists were clenching now, too, blinding anger threatening to swallow her whole. She wouldn’t actually lash out, no more than she would have used the crown sutra on Monkey’s younger self no matter how infuriating he was, but she wanted to so badly her vision blurred.

“Don’t,” she growled, barely recognising the husk of her own voice. “Don’t you dare bring her into this. You have no idea what she...” She forced herself to stop, choking back a confession that was not hers to make, a lifetime of someone else’s suffering that deserved more respect than being used as fodder for an argument. “You’ve been with us for five minutes, Kaedo. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, really? Because it looks pretty straightforward to me.” He stared her down without flinching, undaunted and unmoved by her wrath. “Anyone can see your god friends are all worthless disasters. I’m just surprised this sort of thing this hasn’t happened a dozen times already.”

“If you don’t like them,” Tripitaka gritted out, “feel free to run off back to wherever you came from. I don’t see anyone around here begging you to stick around.”

She was already drawing the fangkris as she spoke, more than willing to throw the thing down at his feet if it came down to that. Never mind that she’d depended on that weapon to keep her safe against demons, never mind that she had come to enjoy the weight of it tugging at her hip; never mind its power and poison, never mind the fact that it made her feel — for probably the first time since she’d set out on this impossible quest with three impossibly powerful gods — like she might actually be able to defend herself once in a while after all.

Never mind any of that. Let him take the stupid thing back if that was what he wanted; she was angry and frustrated, drained to exhaustion from too much worrying, and she could not bring herself to care any more.

Kaedo looked down at her hand, the weapon still and solid and unshaking, then up into her rage-darkened face. The anger on his own was bleeding out now, replaced by something Tripitaka couldn’t quite make sense of.

She told herself she didn’t care about that either.

“You wouldn’t last five minutes without me,” he said. Rather more brittle than bitter, it wasn’t quite the accusation she’d expected. “And I couldn’t live with myself if I left you in this mess all alone.”

“I’m not alone,” Tripitaka reminded them both, voice shaking with conviction and faith. “Monkey and Pigsy are back now. I brought them back, both of them, and I didn’t need your help to do it.” She took a deep, steadying breath, driving down the quaking by pure force of will. “We’ll figure this out together, just like we always do, and we’ll get Sandy back together, them and me, and we won’t need your help to do that either!”

The tension in Kaedo’s jaw should have made him look older, angrier, defiant; instead, it made him look small and unexpectedly vulnerable. Not for the first time, Tripitaka was reminded of just how young he really was.

“Oh, really?”

The tremor in his voice, barely perceptible but telling, was not enough to balm her temper; she did not raise her voice, but her own voice, when she countered, was seething and petulant.

“Yes, _really_!”

Kaedo did not flinch. He took a short step back, steadying himself, and when he spoke again all traces of trembling had been thoroughly eradicated.

“Well, then,” he pressed, looking her right in the eye, “why are you hiding out here by yourself, pretending to gather firewood we both know we never needed, and not back there with your precious idiot god friends, doing all that stuff ‘together’?”

Tripitaka opened her mouth.

And swiftly closed it again.

Why bother, she thought, when he already knew the answer? He wouldn’t have asked the question if he didn’t. He probably wouldn’t be out here in the first place, wasting his time scouring an empty forest floor for useless wood; he would have stayed sitting, kept his mouth shut, let her go alone, or else let Pigsy go with her instead.

He was here because he knew exactly why she was really here: _hiding_ , not from her friends but from her own responsibilities. Just like he’d given her the fangkris because he knew she would need a weapon if she was to learn self-reliance, just like he had nudged her again and again, all the way through this unexpected situation, towards the right decisions she could not make by herself. Just like he had always been there when she needed him — whether she wanted him or not — there he was.

And here he was now, again.

Always in the moment when she needed it the most and wanted it the least. Always when she felt frozen and lost, paralysed by indecision or crushed by the weight of her own helplessness and ineptitude, always exactly when she was on the verge of lying down and giving up.

And here again, now, asking the very questions she didn’t want to hear, not to be cruel or to hurt her — though she doubted he’d shed any tears if he knew that he had — nor as a means of throwing her unjustified wrath back in her face, but because he knew now, just like all those other times, that she needed to hear them.

And, yes, that she needed to face them.

She turned away, closed her eyes, and breathed. Deep and slow, drawing breath from her stomach, filling her chest, digging her boots into the soft earth, trying to reconnect with the part of her that grew up in a monastery, the part of her that was raised by the Scholar to face even the hardest questions without shame and without hiding.

She slipped the fangkris back onto her belt where it belonged — hers, until he asked for it back — then she turned back to Kaedo and said, “I’m sorry.”

“Stop that.” He took a step forward, longer than she’d expect from one with a stride nearly as short as hers, and locked eyes with her again, just as firmly as before. “More hiding. Behind apologies or amends or whatever else you sentimental monk-types think you need to do. You can yell at me all you like, so long as you listen to me, and stop _hiding_.”

The word echoed, a stinging reverberation that lodged itself between Tripitaka’s ribs and burrowed deep. She wanted to slap it away, to bristle and take offence, but of course he was right again. The apology was just another deflection, just as he’d said, another means of dancing around the question she didn’t want to have to think about, much less try to answer.

“I’m not hiding,” she rasped, knowing that it was a lie, knowing that he would see it was a lie. Counting on it, perhaps, because that would make it easier to admit the truth: that she was—

“You’re scared.”

Spoken with such maddening certainty that she couldn’t even try to deny it. Not that she would have; even if she’d wanted to drag this out even longer than she already had, she suddenly found that she lacked the strength to try. Drained and weary, frustration boiling her nerves away until nothing remained but their frayed, too-sensitive ends, why should she waste what little energy she still had on arguing against something they both knew was true?

“Fine,” she sighed at last, hating her voice for quavering and hating herself for letting it happen. “Yes, I’m scared. Monkey was right about her, Kaedo: it’s not like it was with them. She’s not a stubborn, arrogant young god, or a child soldier with more power than courage. She’s _human_. She’s tiny and squishy and vulnerable and human, and I don’t want to hurt her again.”

She didn’t expect compassion from Kaedo, who had already voiced his pride in not having any, but it still stung a little when his only response was to shrug and say, “Okay, but you need to.”

Another truth she didn’t want to hear, another truth she couldn’t bear to face.

“I know.” She hoped he would see how much courage it took just to say it. “But that doesn’t make it easier. It was hard enough with Monkey, and he was a god. He could take care of himself if things got dicey. Sandy can’t. She’s completely dependent on us to keep her safe.”

She didn’t just mean the squishy human parts, she realised too late, and she didn’t just mean from demons.

“But she’s not safe,” Kaedo pointed out, ruthless but not wrong. “So long as she’s like that, none of us are.”

It took every ounce of strength Tripitaka had not to lose her temper again, not to shake him by the collar and yell into his face, _stop telling me things I know!_ She hated him for it, and she hated herself even more because she needed this infuriating boy, this child in adult’s clothing, to keep her grounded and keep her on the right path and tell her things she should have known for herself. She needed him, and it was backwards and wrong, and why, _why_ wasn’t she better at this?

She threw herself down onto the ground, sat there for a long time in silence, and let him see exactly how helpless she really felt.

“Why can’t someone else do it?” she asked, voice hitching dangerously close to a sob. “I already brought Pigsy and Monkey back, didn’t I? Surely one of them can do it for her. Surely _someone_ can...”

“You know they can’t.” He kept a physical distance, but was relentless in pressing himself into her emotional space. “It has to be you, Tripitaka.”

The emphasis on her name — her title — made her angry. It also made her desperately, devastatingly sad.

“Why?” she asked, as small and hopeless as any child, magic-induced or otherwise. “Because I was there when she wished it? Am I tied to that stupid magic?”

“That too.” He shrugged again, tense and stiff-shouldered, not even trying to be casual. “But not just that.”

Of course not; that would be too simple, wouldn’t it? Not for the first time, Tripitaka forced herself to remember that this was not Kaedo’s fault, that he had done nothing but try to help — sometimes despite her resistance — and that she and Sandy had gotten themselves into this mess all on their own. It was unfair, she reminded herself, to pour her frustrations onto the one person who had kept a clear head through the whole thing.

She would not lose her temper again. She would not—

She gritted her teeth, sighed, and asked, “Then what?”

“Because you’re _you_.” Said quietly with none of his usual derision or dryness. As close to compassion as she’d ever really seen in him, the strange, subdued look on his face made her pay attention. “Because you’re Tripitaka, and because somewhere inside that tiny squishy human body of hers is a god who’s going to grow up to idolise you.” He let that sink in, not for nearly long enough, then pressed on, with surprising maturity, “You don’t need me to tell you why that’s important.”

It brought Tripitaka no comfort to hear it said aloud; it only made her feel worse. “I think,” she sighed, “if we’ve learned anything from this fiasco, it’s that she really shouldn’t be doing that.”

“None of them should,” Kaedo agreed easily. “But they do, all three of them. Even when they’re like that, little kids and even more useless than usual.” This time, the wryness of his grin did comfort her, if only a little bit. “C’mon, Tripitaka. Why do you think Mini Monkey came back here after he found out what the world thought of him? Why do you think Pint-Sized Pigsy needed you to tell him what he already knew about himself after he took out that cluster of demons?”

Tripitaka fought the urge to bristle, to glare and pout and generally act like the pre-adolescent children Pigsy and Monkey had recently been.

“Pigsy needs a lot of positive reinforcement,” she pointed out, only slightly sullenly. “And who can even try to guess what Monkey thinks?”

Kaedo waved off her point like the pointless diversion it was. “They _trust_ you,” he pressed. “Not because of prophecy or the power of your name or whatever else, but because you’re _you_. Because they believe — stupidly, we’ve established that, but still — they can depend on you.”

Tripitaka thought of her own frustration and ineptitude, all the big and small ways she’d let her miniaturised companions down during their transformations. The way she’d lost her temper with Monkey, and then immediately afterwards with Sandy. The way she’d let herself fall back and hide behind Pigsy’s strength and power when the demons attacked, even after she’d sworn that she wouldn’t do that, even after she’d committed to protecting them, to for once not being the one who needed to be rescued.

She had tried so hard to be the mature, responsible adult in the moment when they needed it most. She had tried so hard to be their protector, their guardian, their caretaker, but she had fallen and faltered and failed at every step.

“They’re wrong,” she said.

“ _You’re_ wrong,” Kaedo shot back, sounding so much like little Sandy that Tripitaka had to laugh a little, high and slightly frenzied, in spite of herself. “Weren’t you just bragging about how you brought the Idiot Brothers back all by yourself?”

Tripitaka glared a warning, both at the insult to her friends and the use of her own words against her. “It’s different,” she said. “Sandy’s different. She’s...”

“Yeah, yeah, ‘all squishy and vulnerable and human’ and all that stuff you keep saying.” He grew serious, then, looking her in the eye in that way he had that compelled her to take notice. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe she’s not as breakable as you think she is?”

This time, Tripitaka’s laughter was acerbic. “Are you serious?” she demanded. “She turned herself into a toddler because she couldn’t handle her own feelings!”

“No,” Kaedo shot back, speaking slowly but with absolute conviction. “She turned herself into a toddler because _you told her_ she couldn’t handle her feelings.”

Tripitaka bared her teeth. “That’s not—”

And then stopped, realising that it was.

 _“I wish I understood my feelings better,”_ Sandy had said, a broken, confessional whisper with her eyes on the healing plant. _“I wish I could let them out like you want me to.”_

If she wasn’t already sitting, Tripitaka was certain she’d fall over.

Kaedo, no doubt seeing the recognition in her, said, “Am I wrong?”

Not trusting herself to say it, Tripitaka could only shake her head.

Always the most loyal and devoted of her three gods, it was no secret that Sandy would do anything Tripitaka told or asked her to do, no matter the wisdom or foolishness of the instruction. It shouldn’t have surprised her to realise that this too had spawned from the same blind devotion that had driven her from the day they met; it shouldn’t have been new information that Sandy, who struggled so much with everything and herself most of all, would only seek peace with her feelings because Tripitaka had willed it so.

It should not have surprised her to realise that this, like everything else, was also her fault.

“I thought I was helping,” she heard herself rasp, sounding exactly as sick as she felt. “That village, those people, that demon... they got into her head. She wasn’t sleeping, she wasn’t...” She bowed her head, aching all over. “She almost killed that stupid plant because she wouldn’t let herself cry. I just wanted her to know that she could. That it was okay, that she was...”

 _Safe_.

“Did you?” Kaedo asked, pressing with surprising gentleness. “Did you tell her that she _could_ , or did you tell her she _should_?”

Knowing it would be all the answer he needed, Tripitaka buried her face in her hands and moaned. “I need to make this right.”

“Yeah, you do.” His bluntness was still not comforting, but it didn’t sting so much this time either. Perhaps because it came on the heels of almost-compassion, or perhaps she was simply feeling too much already. Either way, she was grateful. “You need to fix it, and that means you need to fix _her_. And you know just as well as I do that you’re not going to do that by hiding out here and pretending to gather firewood.”

“I know.” She did, of course; she’d known it even before she left their camp. Perhaps that was why she was speaking more softly now as well. I know that, Kaedo, I really do. But I’m still...”

“Scared?” 

Tripitaka lifted her head, letting him see the lines on her face, all the shame and the helplessness, the despair, the grief, and the self-hatred; she was overwhelmed, she was exhausted, she was—

“Yeah,” she whispered, and let him see that too. “Scared.”

For the first time since they left camp, Kaedo’s smile was warm and sincere.

“Believe it or not,” he told her, “you’re not the only one.”

For a fraction of a second, thrown as she was by the shift in his tone, Tripitaka assumed he was talking about himself. He was standing over her, smiling and completely at ease, and yet it still took her a moment to piece together the words for what they were: not a confession from his own heart, but a signpost pointing to a different, more delicate one.

“... _oh_ ,” she heard herself breathe.

His smile widened, then softened.

“I think,” he said, sounding dangerously close to tender, “there’s a scared little kid back at camp, who’d be really happy to know she’s not the only one who feels that way.”

Tripitaka closed her eyes. She pictured Sandy, both versions of her, the one who couldn’t cry and the one who couldn’t stop, and she ached, and she swallowed, and she—

She took a deep breath, looked up at Kaedo, and nodded.

“You know,” she murmured, “I think you might be right.”

*


	12. Chapter 12

*

She wasn’t sure what she expected when she and Kaedo returned to camp, but it certainly wasn’t what she found.

Though it had admittedly just been an excuse to get away, it seemed the little firewood they’d gathered would be put to good use after ; night had settled heavily over the forest by the time they got back, a bitter chill attaching itself to the air, and their meagre fire offered little enough light that Tripitaka had to squint to make out the figures of her friends around it: Pigsy sitting close to the flames with a blanket-swaddled Sandy at his side, and Monkey a short way away, performing flamboyant tricks with his staff and generally showing off for their amusement.

He was clearly having the time of his life, though his audience did not seem quite so thrilled by his antics; Pigsy was noisily yawning his boredom, and Sandy was fidgeting in her blanket, restless and clearly unhappy.

Still, not even Pigsy, indifferent as he was to Monkey’s performance, noticed Tripitaka and Kaedo’s return. None of them did, not until Kaedo cleared his throat loudly and remarked, even more loudly, “Good to see you guys are making yourselves useful.”

Monkey, acting as if h knew they were there the whole time, only laughed.

“The kid was nervous,” he said, by way of explanation. “Needed a distraction from all the gloomy night-time cold-dark-scary stuff.” This point he punctuated by swinging his staff in a lazy, playful arc in Kaedo’s general direction, as if making a feint. “You got a problem with that?”

“Oh, not at all. Go right ahead.” Though there was a fair distance between them, Kaedo made a show all the same of pretending to parry the blow. “I’m sure random acts of violence are exactly what a terrified toddler needs to calm down.”

“Always worked for me,” Monkey retorted, sticking out his tongue. “But then, you humans are weaklings, so...”

“Thank you,” Tripitaka interrupted, cutting them off before they could ruin yet another otherwise pleasant moment with their usual bickering. “For looking after her. I hope she wasn’t too much trouble?”

Shaking his head, Monkey shrank his staff and slipped it back into his hair with a dramatic flourish. A wave of his hand and a deep bow to signify the end of his performance, then he sauntered over to the fire and plucked Sandy up into his arms, blanket and all. He held her up over his head, cooing affectionately, and for an adorable, touching moment, it seemed that to him there was no-one else in the whole wide world.

“No trouble at all,” he said after a long beat, not really speaking to Tripitaka at all. “Isn’t that right, little tiny Sandy-brat? No trouble at all!”

Tripitaka smothered a fond smile. “Good to know.”

Naturally, they both ignored her. Monkey bounced Sandy a couple of times, then let her settle against his chest, still swaddled and wriggling in her blanket; she snuggled up to him like it was second nature, resting her head on his shoulder and burbling contentedly to herself. Watching them together, Tripitaka had to swallow down a sudden lump in her throat, seeing how effortlessly Monkey could calm and soothe her, as comfortable now with a child in his arms as he ever was with a weapon or with closed fists.

Apparently he’d gotten over his fear of hurting her. Or perhaps she’d simply won him over with her tiny but formidable charms. Whatever the reason, the real sweetness in his voice and his smile as he rocked her and hummed to her, filled Tripitaka with the most wonderful warmth.

“It’s getting late,” she said to Kaedo, rather more hopefully than she’d care to admit. “Surely the ‘conversation’ can wait until the morning? You know, after we’ve all had a decent night’s sleep?”

The disgusted look on his face was really all the answer she needed.

“How is it,” he muttered, “that I’m _still_ the only adult around here?”

Given her track record with the three de-aged gods, that wasn’t nearly as much hyperbole as Tripitaka would have liked. He was right, and it annoyed her more than she could say that she needed him to say it.

She allowed herself a moment, though, to stand there and breathe in every atom she could of the sweet scene — Monkey cradling Sandy’s tiny human body against his chest like she was the most precious thing he’d ever held in his life, Pigsy watching them from his spot by the fire, shaking his head and pretending he didn’t find it just as endearing as she did — and commit it all to memory. A moment of bonding, of real familial love between three gods who were so often so much at odds with each other; it was such a small thing next to all the stress and the worry and the exhaustion, but those little, barely-there moments almost made the whole mess worthwhile.

At last, when she couldn’t put it off any longer, she turned to Kaedo and said, low enough that she hoped only he would hear, “Fine, okay, you’ve made your point.”

“I usually do,” he quipped, then sobered. “Seriously: it’s only going to get harder the longer you delay, so just get on with it while some of us still have our youth.”

A fitting — no doubt deliberate — remark. Tripitaka refrained from glaring at him for it, and focused instead on the more unpleasant task ahead of her: namely, extricating Sandy from Monkey’s arms.

Easier said than done, as it turned out. As reluctant as Tripitaka was to take Sandy away and attempt to break through to her, Monkey was infinitely more reluctant to let her go.

“It’s not like she even understands you anyway,” he muttered, sourly protective. Then, lower, to Sandy, “You only understand _me_ , don’t you? ’Cause I’m your favourite, yes, I am! Your very favouritest favourite...”

Tripitaka fought to keep from choking. “Monkey, please.”

“Yes,” Pigsy chimed in, sounding faintly nauseous. “ _Please_. I’ve been listening to this nonsense for an hour. I beg of you, Tripitaka: please, _please_ , take her away and let me have just five minutes of peace and quiet.”

Monkey rounded on him like he’d just said something thoroughly unspeakable. “No,” he said with parental authority, clutching Sandy tighter to his chest. “ _We_ go away. _She_ stays here by the fire where it’s warm and toasty.”

Pigsy glared daggers at him for that, but for once he didn’t argue. Tripitaka, deeply touched, said to Monkey, “Look at you, all parental and protective.”

“Not protective,” Monkey huffed. “Just basic common sense.”

“Seriously?” Kaedo teased. “That’s what you’re running with?”

“Because it’s _true_.” He gave Sandy a last tight squeeze then set her gently down on the ground, tucking the edges of the blanket more securely around her bony shoulders; whatever word he might have for it, Tripitaka couldn’t help thinking it sure looked a lot like protective. “She’s a tiny squishy human now, remember? Tiny squishy humans have to stay warm all the time or they die. And besides, she’s scared of the dark.” His voice was rising now, urgent and fretting, as he turned back to Tripitaka. “So you keep her where it’s light, okay? And warm. And if she gets squirmy, give her that dumb fish thing to play with, she likes that. And if—”

He stopped, cut off as Tripitaka threw her arms around him in a fierce, tearful hug.

“I’ll take good care of her,” she promised. Then, in a low whisper, “You big softy.”

Monkey wriggled out of the hug, scowling in a perfect mirror of his petulant younger self. “Like I said,” he muttered, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. “Basic common sense. I just don’t want the stupid thing to freeze to death before you turn her back to normal.”

And off he stomped to the far side of the copse, waving a commanding gesture for Pigsy and Kaedo to follow.

Pigsy abandoned the fire with predictable reluctance, pausing as he passed to pat Tripitaka on the shoulder and to lightly ruffle Sandy’s hair. “Just holler if you need anything,” he murmured, and Tripitaka couldn’t tell which one of them he was speaking to.

Kaedo hesitated a beat or two longer before he followed their lead . “You’ll be fine,” he said to Tripitaka, in a low, secretive murmur. “They’re not the only ones who believe in you, you know.”

Then he was gone too, and Tripitaka was left alone with a terrified toddler who would not look her in the eye.

*

Being close to the warm fire did not stop Sandy from shivering.

Not did being close to its light seem to set at ease her fear of the dark. She flinched away when Tripitaka tried to reach for her, burrowing so deeply inside her blanket that Tripitaka felt almost like she was holding a conversation with the fabric and not the child hiding within.

She didn’t try to coax her out; let her hide all she liked, if that was what she needed to feel any kind of safe.

“Would you like something to eat?” she offered instead, keeping her voice soft and gentle, careful, the way she would speak to a wounded bird or a trapped kitten. “Or something to drink? I hear you really like water...”

The blanket twitched, offering a barely audible, “No.”

Tripitaka sighed. The rejection was a blow, but not exactly unexpected. She had never known any version of Sandy who could eat or drink, even water, while she was feeling frightened.

“Okay,” she said. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. You can just stay inside your blanket and that’s okay.” She wet her lips, swallowing thickly, then pressed on. “I’m going to talk to you for a while, about some very important things. If you feel like coming out, I’d really like to be able to look at you... but it’s okay if you’d prefer to stay hidden. I know that you...” She winced, feeling a pang in her chest. “I know that you feel safer when you’re hiding.”

It hurt to say it, to think of her Sandy, so much like this little one in the way she would hide herself away. In her, a lifetime of survival instincts, of hiding in the dark instead of from it, so many years of hiding to keep herself alive she could no longer remember how it felt not to have to. In this Sandy, the typical instincts of a small child to make herself invisible when the world was scary. The same reactions, yes, but for such viscerally different reasons, and it hurt to see such a stark, devastating mirror.

It hurt, too, because it made her think of another Sandy, older than this one but younger than hers, a child almost the same age as Monkey and Pigsy had been, abandoned on the side of the road, thrown away by the family she’d thought loved her. A child who had put aside this little toddler’s instincts, but who would very soon learn the darker shades of hiding that the older Sandy — her Sandy — would still, so many years later, be unable to completely let go.

It wasn’t fair, she thought. It wasn’t fair that even in the very earliest stages of her life Sandy always had something to hide from, and some reason to be afraid.

She looked down at the blanket again, swallowing her sorrow as best she could, and was startled to find Sandy blinking up at her from her little nest, two pale, wide eyes all she could make out through the folds of the fabric.

“How?” she asked in a very small, very confused voice.

Tripitaka did not understand the question. “How what?”

Sandy whined, frustration colouring her fear, and stuck most of her head out of the blanket. “Stupid human,” she grumbled, jabbing her little fist in the general direction of Tripitaka’s face. Then, no doubt mimicking one or the other version of Monkey, she added, “Don’t know _nothing_.”

That was fractionally more enlightening, though probably more by luck than intention. Tripitaka had spent much of her life learning to translate ancient and barely-legible texts; deciphering the clumsy code of a linguistically-challenged toddler was, it turned out, not so completely different from deciphering sacred writings.

“You want to know how I know,” she guessed out loud, feeling her heart begin to ache all over again as the weight of the words struck home. “How I know you feel safer when you’re hiding?”

Sandy didn’t nod, but her eyes lit up in confirmation. “Don’t know nothing,” she said again, and this time Tripitaka heard the nuance her little tongue could not shape: _you don’t know me_.

It wasn’t an easy question. Wouldn’t have been easy, even if Sandy had been old enough to grasp the delicate nuances of wish-fulfilment magic and a lifetime of stunted emotion, but with her like this — small and simple and struggling to string two words together — the task felt insurmountable.

For all the various languages she did know, for all the ways she could more or less make sense of what Sandy was trying to say to her, Tripitaka was nonetheless entirely at a loss for how to communicate with her in turn. She barely knew how to speak on the level of older children like Monkey and Pigsy had been, much less a toddler this small. She’d whiled away her own childhood in archives, monasteries, libraries; the Scholar used to joke that she talked like a lexicon by the time she was five years old. Trying to make Sandy understand her at all was challenging enough; how could she even hope to explain that she was friends with an older version of her, one who had lived in hiding for her entire life?

She sat herself down in front of Sandy’s blanket, making herself as small and unintimidating as she could. Swallowing down the urge to try and touch her, she said, very carefully, “You’re a very brave little girl. And when you grow up, you’re going to be even braver.”

“How?” Sandy asked again, and this time the meaning was perfectly clear.

“Because I know you,” Tripitaka said simply. She did reach out, then, booping her ever so gently on the nose, the way she’d seen Monkey — both versions of him — do so many times before. “I’ve seen you, all grown up and brave and clever and so powerful. I know a lot of things about you, Sandy, and more than anything else in the whole world, I know that you always, always love to hide.”

Sandy didn’t seem to take much comfort in this. She considered it for a beat or two, then mumbled, “Oh.”

“Not like this,” Tripitaka amended hastily. “Not hiding because you’re scared or upset. No: you hide because you’re clever, because you’re brilliant and resourceful and you... you know that hiding is how you stay safe.” She watched Sandy mouthing the words, confusion and frustration colouring her face, and clarified in simpler terms: “You’re smart, Sandy. Not scared.”

That last part got through to her. She turned her little head, looking around herself in all directions, as though trying to absorb this impossible piece of information. “Not scared?”

“That’s right.” Taking her cautious curiosity as an invitation, Tripitaka shuffled closer. “You even stop being scared of the dark. When you grow up, you love dark places. You—”

She stopped, struck by the distance between the truth as it was and the prettier version she was trying to sell.

Such a lovely picture to paint for a child scared of the midnight dark: that she would one day grow up to embrace the very thing that so terrified her now. But that wasn’t how it really was, and Tripitaka couldn’t bear to hold the lie under her tongue and on her face, couldn’t bear to force a smile and pretend that these things happened by choice, pretend that it was anything other than the tragedy it was: a young god, still only a child herself, alone and abandoned, forced into the shadows by a world that would destroy her if she let the light catch her face.

“The darkness is your friend,” Tripitaka finished in a whisper. “It protects you, it takes care of you. It...” Her voice broke; she hoped that Sandy wouldn’t notice. “It’s your _home_ , Sandy.”

She regretted the word instantly; before it was even completely out, Sandy’s face was crumpling, the little fractures of hope dissolving into grief and loneliness, betrayal and misery.

“Home,” she moaned, starting to sniffle. “Want to go home.”

Tripitaka could not have anticipated how badly that would hurt, how thoroughly Sandy’s little whimpers would overpower her. She heard echoes of her own voice, rising with unforgivable frustration — _“that’s never going to happen, Sandy!”_ — and she saw it happen all over again, the way Sandy grew so silent and so still, the way her tears fell suddenly soundlessly, the way she started to shut down.

 _Not again_ , she thought desperately. _Not again, please, not this again, not_ —

She wouldn’t do that to her again. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t, she _couldn’t_.

“Sandy.” She wet her lips, willing herself not to cry; if she started, she knew Sandy would swiftly follow, and then become inconsolable. “I know you want to go home. I know you do, and I understand that, and I...” Another crack in her voice; this one Sandy definitely noticed, flinching minutely and hiding her face. “I wish I could take you there, Sandy, i really do. But the home you want... the family you miss... it’s not...”

_It’s not real, it’s not yours, it’s not—_

_They hate you, they hurt you, they—_

She couldn’t. Couldn’t say what was true, couldn’t sugar-coat it into something that wasn’t. She couldn’t bear to tell this small, frightened child that her family would reject her, that they would throw her out into the dark and the cold that she hated so much, that they would leave her on the side of the road, shivering and scared, without so much as a blanket for warmth or comfort, the moment they found out she wasn’t human.

She couldn’t. She couldn’t. She—

“Please,” Sandy was whimpering, looking up at her with tear-filled eyes. “Please, please, please, my home, my _family_...”

“No,” Tripitaka rasped, aching all the way down to her bones. “Sandy, I know you miss them. I know you love them, I know you want them, but they’re not...” Her hands were shaking; she wanted to clench them into fists but she didn’t want to upset the already terrified toddler. She buried them in the folds of her robe instead, and confessed, hating herself, “They _leave_ you.”

Sandy blinked up at her, upset but not yet readying to cry. She repeated the word slowly, confusedly, and Tripitaka wondered if she even really understood what it meant.

“Leave,” she echoed, once and a second time. “Leave?”

“Leave,” Tripitaka repeated, matching her slowness. “You’re not human, Sandy. Maybe that’s why you think we’re all stupid, huh?” Her attempted laugh sounded more like a sob; Sandy echoed it with a hiccuping whimper of her own. “You’re a god. You’re powerful and talented, just like Monkey and Pigsy. But when your family find out, they...” She paused, swallowing over a sudden painful lump in her throat, and shook her head. “They get scared. Like you are now. Like I am too. They get scared, and they get confused, and they don’t...”

 _They don’t know how to process their feelings_.

Just like their daughter, all those years later.

Tripitaka swallowed again, then turned away.

She could feel Sandy start to tremble, the whole blanket-pile twitching and shuddering as she worked through what she was hearing, grasping at those terrible, painful truths as best her small, simple mind could manage.

“Scared,” she whispered after a long beat, and Tripitaka ached all over again, because of course that was the word this version of her would latch on to, she who had not yet lived that life of far worse things than fear.

“I know you are,” she whispered, eyes closed. “I know, Sandy.”

“Scared,” Sandy repeated, starting to cry. “Cold, dark. _Scared_.”

“I _know_ ,” Tripitaka cried, an explosion that felt like another sob. She knew that Sandy was only talking about this, the world around her — the chill of a forest at night, the spooky nocturnal darkness — but still she couldn’t stop herself from seeing that other truth, a very different source of darkness and cold and fear. “I know you’re cold, I know you’re scared. And I’d give anything to be able to take those things away from you. All the fear, all those years alone in the cold and the dark, all the horrible things you have to live through. I’d give anything to make it so you don’t have to live that life, Sandy. I wish...”

It was true. Desperate, devastated, she wished—

Even knowing that wishing was the root of all this, tainted and twisted and tangled, still—

Still, with everything she had in her, she wished.

She understood now, perhaps for the first time, why Monkey and Pigsy had joked about keeping Sandy like this. Light-hearted to them, a less-than-subtle dig at the older Sandy’s perceived lack of intellect, to Tripitaka it was suddenly very, very serious.

To raise her here, the three of them together, to bypass all the worst moments in her life and give her the chance to grow up happy and wanted and protected, in the care of other gods as she should have been from the start, able to learn about herself and her powers safely and without fear of judgement. To be a part of a family that loved her and cherished her, not in spite of her strangeness but in so many ways because of it.

It was the life she deserved, the life she should have lived. Cold, perhaps, and dark in the forests at night, but this Sandy was so young and children at that age were so adaptable: she would adjust, she would grow, she would learn to think of places like this as her home even when it was cold, and she would learn — like her other self did, but kinder and gentler — that the dark was not her enemy.

Her whole life like this: protected, looked after, and so very loved.

Tripitaka heard a strangled cry carve through the air, and it took her a long moment to realise the sound had come not from Sandy but from herself. She was on her feet, though she had no memory of standing up, shaking from head to toe like she’d been thrown into an ice-cold lake.

“I can’t do this,” she heard herself rasp, discordant and faraway, like the words were coming from someone else. “I know you’re scared, Sandy, but if I turn you back to yourself, you’ll be worse. All those awful memories, all those repressed feelings. You’ll be lost, you’ll be in pain, you’ll forget how to _cry_...”

Sandy, blinking up at her with terrified, tear-filled eyes, shook her head with rising desperation.

“Home,” she said again, like that was the only word she knew, the only word she could comprehend. “Please, home, please...”

Tripitaka had no more memory of moving than she did of having stood in the first place, but there she was: staggering backwards, lurching away from the quivering ball of blanket and toddler, cowering like she really was a demon after all.

“I can’t,” she whispered, and her voice echoed and echoed until she sounded like a child too. “I can’t, I can’t, I _can’t_...”

And she spun on her heels, clapped her hands over her ears to drown out Sandy’s fearful cries, and fled into the forest.

*

She knew that they would send someone to get her, of course.

What she couldn’t have foreseen was that it would be Monkey.

She was on the brink of hyperventilating when he found her, huddled on a mossy rock with her head between her knees. Trying to catch her breath, trying to catch her thoughts, trying to catch hold of anything that might help to guide her out of the wildness she’d thrown herself into, the irrepressible need to protect that helpless, vulnerable child from the world that would too soon devour her whole.

She didn’t look up when she heard him approach. She only sighed, swallowed, and said, again, “I can’t do it.”

“Yeah, we heard.” He sat down, not waiting for an invitation, leaving a couple of hand-spaces of breathing room between them. “You were saying it kind of a lot.”

Tripitaka raised her head, shot him a withering look, then sighed and repeated herself. “I can’t do it, Monkey.”

He met her gaze, unflinching, and laughed. Not a cold laugh, or a cruel one, but there was a bite to it even so that made her bristle. She wasn’t used to that from Monkey; there were never any shades of grey between them. They were either in perfect harmony, thinking in tandem, or they were so completely out of sync they did nothing but argue and fight for hours.

This was new, the way he looked at her, the way he laughed like he thought the sound would speak for him. Like he disagreed but still didn’t want to argue with her, like he knew that wouldn’t get either of them anywhere. Like maybe the time he’d spent as a child had made him more mature, somehow, than he was before.

“So, what’re you thinking?” he asked after a beat. “We just keep her like this and pretend it’s totally normal?”

Tripitaka glared, not appreciating his tone. “You’re the one who wanted to keep her like this in the first place.”

“Yeah, because she’s _cute_. Not because it was a good idea.” He sobered swiftly, though, and that made her all the more uncomfortable. “Seriously, monk. Aren’t you supposed to be the one telling me that? ‘This isn’t a game, Monkey’ or ‘she’s a real person, Monkey’ or ‘no, Monkey, we can’t bring a small child on a world-saving quest’. All that stuff?”

All of it, yes. It was all true, all things she would have told him without a second thought if their positions were reversed, if she’d really believed he was serious when he’d snickered and suggested they keep Sandy this way.

But he wasn’t serious; he was never serious, and least of all about that.

But she...

She was.

She really, really was.

“You know how she lived,” she said in a whisper. “If we keep her like this... if we _really_ keep her like this... we can protect her from all of that. Give her a better life, a good life. She’ll have you and Pigsy to teach her how to be a god. She’ll learn how to use her powers safely and properly, and she’ll learn how to process her feelings in a safe environment. She’ll be happy, she’ll be healthy, she’ll be—”

“Normal?”

Said with an edge far sharper than she would have expected from him. Tripitaka deflated a little, thrown. “I never said that.”

“Thought it, though, didn’t you?” His eyes were only fractionally less cold than his voice. “Like she’s some broken toy you can fix.”

“She’s not broken yet,” Tripitaka pointed out. “We can—”

“No.” She expected him to sound petulant, perhaps playful, but he was neither of those things; his voice, his eyes, every part of him gleamed with devastating seriousness. “No way. You don’t get to make that call.”

“It’s not a ‘call’, Monkey.”

“Right: it’s a life. It’s _her_ life. Not yours, not mine. Not that know-it-all little tag-along Whatsisname...”

“Kaedo.”

“Whoever.” Monkey waved the point and the name aside, dismissing it — and, indeed, him — as wholly unimportant. “Would you have tried to keep me pint-sized forever too, huh? If I was easier to rein in?”

“You weren’t.” The very thought was enough to make her laugh. “You were more trouble as a child, Monkey, not less.”

“Yeah, yeah, so I keep hearing. But if I _was_.” Another expansive gesture, this one understandably more impatient. “You’d do it, then? Keep me small and easy to keep in line? Convince yourself that you were protecting me, too, from having to watch the Master die in front of me and taking the fall and all the rest of it?”

It hadn’t occurred to her.

“I would be, wouldn’t I?”

“Sure. And taking away all the stuff that made it matter, too.” He stood, circled her a couple of times, seemingly unable to hold his body still. Agitated, in a way he sometimes got when grappling with something very close to his heart. “A thousand years, monk. A thousand years of experiences and memories, all the good and bad and in-between stuff, and you’d just... what? Toss them all away like they’re one of your insignificant little human lifetimes?” He huffed, but there was an edge to that too. “ _A thousand years_. Can you people even count that high?”

Tripitaka rolled her eyes. “We can count,” she said, then grew serious too. “But it’s not the same. Sandy didn’t get a thousand years of training and protection on Jade Mountain. She didn’t get to spend her whole life being pampered and looked after by the Master and the other gods up there. She got called ‘demon’ and thrown away by the only people in the world she trusted. Shunned, hated, unwanted, unloved. A lifetime of hiding in the cold and the dark, starving and sick, afraid to show her face in daylight. She got _pain_ , Monkey, and she got it alone.”

“Yeah.” His eyes gleamed; he bared his teeth, and they did too. “And then she met you.”

And that, Tripitaka thought angrily, was a big part of the problem.

“I’m not good for her,” she said in a hoarse, futile whisper. “I’m _really_ not good for her.”

Monkey stopped his pacing, spun to face her with fire in his eyes.

“You don’t get to decide that,” he said in a shaking, furious voice. “You don’t get to tell the rest of us how much your being here means to us. You don’t get to stop any one of us from feeling stuff about you just because it makes you uncomfortable. And you definitely don’t get to take away the most precious moment in her whole crappy, awful life just because you don’t feel ‘worthy’ or whatever.”

Tripitaka tensed, anger clashing with shame. “It’s not about that.”

“Yeah, it is.” He drew his staff from his hair, but didn’t extend it, instead twirling and threading it between his fingers as a distraction for them both. “You don’t know how she feels about any of this stuff, monk. You only know how _you_ feel about it. And that’s... it’s not good enough. You don’t get to just rewrite someone’s whole entire life because _you_ think it’s worth it.”

He was right, and she hated that. Hated it because it was nothing she didn’t already know, hated it doubly because she’d needed to hear it from him: far worse than Kaedo, who had proven himself wise beyond his few years, Monkey had proven himself to be the one among them least qualified to offer advice on growth and maturity, or indeed on any subject at all.

It made her angry. It made her angry because apparently even he was better at this than she was, because her great advisors in this whole mess were a pre-adolescent boy and a god who often still acted like one himself.

She buried her face in her hands, hiding herself from view, and demanded, “So what now?”

Monkey’s sigh turned the air cold around her. “You know what,” he said, gentle but not without firmness. “C’mon, monk, you’re supposed to be the smart one here.”

True, but she certainly didn’t feel that way. She felt almost as small and brainless as little Sandy.

“I’m tired of being the smart one,” she said to Monkey, letting him hear exactly how tired she was, in every bone in her body. “You be the smart one for once, okay? You tell me how I’m supposed to explain all those awful, horrible things to a terrified toddler. You tell me how I’m supposed to look that scared little girl in the eye and tell her that her family — the family she wants so badly to go home to — are going to dump her on the side of the road and leave her for dead. You tell me how I’m supposed to put her through all that, Monkey, because I really, really don’t know how I can do this.”

Monkey cocked his head, gawking at her like she was speaking the ancient language.

Finally, after a long and somewhat comical amount of staring, he shrugged, slipped his staff back into his hair and said, like it was the simplest thing in the world, “So don’t.”

Now it was Tripitaka’s turn to gawk. “You... what?”

“Don’t,” he said again, slower and rather more smugly. “Why does she need to know all that stuff anyway? She’s a baby! She knows, like, three whole things in the world: Humans stupid, Monkey awesome.”

“She doesn’t _know_ that one,” Tripitaka countered, cracking a grudging smile in spite of herself. “She _believes_ it, because she believes everything she hears and because you’ve said it about a thousand times.”

Monkey smirked. “Doesn’t make it less true.”

“Even if it was,” Tripitaka muttered, annoyed now for much more comfortable reasons, “that’s still only two things.”

His triumphant cackle told her she’d played right into his hands. “Humans stupid. Monkey awesome. Home _safe_.”

“That—” She stopped, reeling as the full force of his point struck her in the chest. “...oh.”

“ _Oh_ ,” he echoed, and his voice and his face were perfect self-satisfied echoes of his younger self, unburdened and light-hearted, a Monkey who did not yet know the impossible weight the world would one day cast onto his shoulders. “She doesn’t care about all that ‘how why what where’ stuff, monk. That’s your thing, and maybe her grown-up thing. But right now she’s a tiny little baby human who communicates by crying and drooling. Just skip the bad stuff and tell her the good part.”

“The good part,” Tripitaka echoed, unimpressed.

“Yeah.” He winked. “You know, the _us_ part. Home safe. Home _us_.”

He looked so proud of himself. And yet...

“I can’t just cut out giant swathes of her life, Monkey,” Tripitaka pointed out tiredly. “This is really important stuff, and she needs to know about it.”

“Why?” He wasn’t trying to needle her, she could tell; the question was an earnest one, asked in good faith, and that cooled her temper a bit. “Again, she’s a tiny bit of a thing. Home safe, remember? She doesn’t need to know how much it’s going to hurt her to get there. She doesn’t need to know all that betrayal-abandonment-hated-demon stuff. She just needs to know if she gets the one thing in the whole stinking world that she wants: a home that’s safe.” He looked her in the eye, fierce and protective and hungry. “Does she get that?”

Tripitaka, touched by the damp gleam she found in his eyes, answered in a breathless whisper: “Yeah, she does.”

“Yeah.” He turned away, clenching his jaw for a long beat, then finished in a wobbly, emotional voice, “She does.”

Tripitaka thought about that. She thought about Monkey’s own journey back to childhood, how upset he had been to learn that his betrayal came not just from humans but from the other gods as well, how deeply it had hurt him to know that his peers and teachers on Jade Mountain had so quickly turned to blame, that even the ones who knew him best had assumed the worst.

She remembered how it had transformed him to learn — no, to accept — that he had a new family in them, one who knew him just as well and still believed in him, who would not betray or abandon him. She remembered how that was what brought him back to himself: not the hard reality of what he would one day become, but the softer one that made all the rest worthwhile.

Maybe he had a point, after all. Not that she would ever admit it to his face — his ego was big enough already — but maybe...

Tripitaka found a smile, not for him but for herself, and teased, “You sure you won’t miss having her like this?”

Monkey laughed, rich and rumbling. “Oh, I’ll _definitely_ miss having her like this. It’s been great having someone around who actually appreciates me and all my awesomeness.” He turned then, and looked at her fully once more. “But it’s not really _her_. You know? She’s way cuter, but she’s not ours. And I think...” He coughed again, then admitted in a hast rush, “I think I maybe like ours a bit better.”

Tripitaka didn’t know why that brought her so much comfort, but it did. Her smile came more naturally; her whole body relaxed.

“Yeah,” she said, thinking of both of them, Sandy and Monkey, all the suffering they couldn’t escape and all the love waiting for them on the other side. “Me too.”

*

This time, when they returned to camp, she wasted no time.

Pigsy and Kaedo, babysitters in their absence, had made no move to approach their troubled little charge, seeming content to keep an eye on her from a distance rather than cause her more distress by trying to engage with her. The Sandy-shaped blanket-bundle hadn’t moved either; it was still twitching and shivering by the fire, and as she moved closer Tripitaka could hear the telltale whimpers from the distressed toddler hiding within.

No change, then. She wondered if Sandy even knew or cared that she’d left her, or that she was now alone.

She bade Monkey rejoin the others, punctuating the request with a hug and a quiet, heartfelt, “Thank you.”

Patting her back, Monkey mustered a wry, slightly shaky grin, “Yeah, no worries.” He pulled away, stooped a bit so he could look her in the eye, and added with all the faith Kaedo had talked about, “You got this, monk.”

Tripitaka didn’t know if that was really true, but she was willing to try.

She crouched in front of the blanket again as soon as she and Sandy were alone, this time without hesitation. A moment to catch her balance and her breath, and she rested her hands on the jutting points where she assumed Sandy’s shoulders were, saying her name a couple of times with all the gentleness she could muster.

Sandy did not respond, but she didn’t retreat either, and her whimpers didn’t increase in pitch or panic. Emboldened, Tripitaka tried again.

“I’ve been doing this all wrong,” she said, with an honesty she hoped even this little version of Sandy would hear and understand. “I’m sorry for that. But if you’ll let me, I’d like to try and do it right this time. Okay?”

She didn’t expect much of a reply, if she got any at all. Sandy was far from responsive even when she didn’t have a thousand reasons not to trust the human whose words had hurt her again and again and again. She expected to have to push through stubborn silences and quiet sobs, to be insistent, to press with gentle firmness or else to simply pour her heart out to a silent, quivering blanket and hope for the best. She expected what she deserved: mistrust and resistance.

Instead she was granted a pair of wide, pale eyes and a tangle of hair as Sandy peeked out from her sanctuary, and a frightened, barely audible, but still somehow hopeful, “Okay.”

Tripitaka swallowed thickly, humbled by this small child’s willingness to listen, by her acceptance and her quiet, undeserved trust. Unbidden, she thought of the Sandy she knew, of the day they first met, fraught with misunderstanding. She recalled the cold steel of her scythe against her neck, the ice in her voice, the feral hunger of one who was both hunter and prey.

There had been no trust in her then, she remembered, and very little willingness to hear her out; if Tripitaka hadn’t whispered her name — _his_ name, then, stolen and claimed without thought and not yet truly her own — who could say what Sandy would have done to her?

She thought about it often, the shift in both their fates from that one small choice: a name whispered, a sewer-dwelling demon transformed into a god, savagery to supplication, to obedience, to devotion; she thought about it often, and she knew that Sandy did as well. One word, one name, and both their lives were changed, intertwined forever.

Sometimes it was daunting, sometimes it awed her: the layers of identities not just her own tied to that name, the transformation in a moment from suspicion and anger and threats to absolute trust, to hope, to faith, to—

To a Sandy not so unlike the one blinking up at her now.

Tripitaka shook off the memory. Focused instead on the present, the small child peering up at her with big, bright eyes, afraid and upset but still, even after all the terrible things she’d tried to tell her, willing to listen.

And so, feeling nearly as afraid herself, Tripitaka spoke.

“I can’t take you back to your home,” she said, watching Sandy’s face carefully for signs to back off or stop. “I know you want to go back there, but it’s not...” She stopped, swallowed hard, and tried to paint the truth, as Monkey had told her, in less vivid colours. “It’s too far away. The home you knew... it’s far, far away from where you are.”

It was the kindest way she knew of phrasing it. Far away, yes, in a thousand different ways, but as Monkey had pointed out, if Sandy could figure out the simple parts maybe that was enough.

Indeed, Sandy was quick to share what little she had pieced together herself, the fractured bits and scraps of Tripitaka’s prior attempts to make her understand. “Never,” she was saying, mouth twitching with the threat of tears. “You said it. _Never_.”

“I did say that,” Tripitaka said, grimacing. “And I—”

“Never,” Sandy insisted. “Never, ever, ever, ever—”

“Okay! Clearly, you understand that part.” She closed her eyes, took a deep, steadying breath, forced herself to pull back and soften again. “What I’m trying to tell you, Sandy, is that it doesn’t matter. Even if you’re really far away from the home you remember, even if you never get to see your family again...”

“Never!”

This time, the word was close to a wail. Tears glimmered in her eyes, the familiar grey-blue transformed into a whirlpool, and Tripitaka reached out to take her small face into her hands, to hold her with all the gentleness she had in her — the Scholar’s gentleness, a life spent trying and failing to learn patience under his tutelage — and gently guide those damp, deep eyes up to meet her own.

“It’s okay,” she said, pressing the words with her palms against cold, pale cheeks. “It’s okay if you nev— if you _don’t_ go back to that home. It’s okay if that doesn’t happen, Sandy. Because we’ll give you a new one.”

Sandy tried to shake her head; Tripitaka loosened her grip enough to let it happen, to let her break free from her grasp and twitch away. The resistance was unwanted, but important; she had to feel comfortable enough to cry or lash out or resist, to do whatever her sore little heart wanted, with no fear of reprisal or punishment. She had to feel _safe_.

“Don’t want a new one,” she was babbling, feverish and frantic and fearful. “Want mine. My family, my home. Mine, mine, mine!”

Tripitaka sighed. “I know you want that. I understand. And if I could, I’d take you there. But it’s...”

She trailed off, mind racing as Sandy’s whimpering words echoed. _Mine_ , over and over again, insistent and demanding in the way of all children of such a young age. Her family, her home. Hers, always _hers_ , just like—

Hm.

Tripitaka turned away, searching in the gathering nocturnal gloom for the silly little fish toy; it lay a short way out of Sandy’s reach, collecting dew in the dark grass, but it was there, close by as it always was, and it was— 

_Mine_.

Tripitaka smiled, recalling Monkey’s earlier fretting — _“If she gets squirmy, give her that dumb fish toy, she likes that...”_ — and Sandy’s never-ending insistence that the little thing was hers, hers, hers. 

She was just as possessive of a hastily-bound scrap of cloth as she was of her distant home. It meant something to her, that battered, silly little toy, enough that she would demand it with just as much urgency, just as much importance as her home and her family.

Tripitaka shuffled over to the toy, scooped it up into her hands and turned it over a couple of times. A miserable, misshapen wreck of a thing, much the worse for the hours it had spent in Sandy’s loving arms, but still, a thing that held importance to a child who had so little.

She slipped back to Sandy’s side, holding the little fish out for her perusal.

Sandy, still whining and sniffling, tensed as she always did to see the thing in someone else’s hands and she lunged protectively at them both, glowering and crying, again, “Mine!”

“That’s right,” Tripitaka said, still smiling as she handed it over. “She’s yours. Because we gave her to you. Do you remember? When you were scared and confused and you didn’t know who we were, we gave her to you so that you’d have a friend to make you feel safe.”

Whether or not she recalled the exact details, Sandy nonetheless nodded, hugging the toy to her chest as she had done so many times before. “Friend!”

Tripitaka nodded her encouragement, letting Sandy see how proud she was of her. She let it sit for a while, let the still-frightened toddler draw the little fish into her blanket and wrap herself around it, hiding them both from view. Tripitaka let it happen, contenting herself to speak to the faceless bundle of fabric, to do whatever it took to make sure Sandy felt safe enough to hear what she had to say.

“We gave her to you because we care about you,” she explained, never taking her eyes off the blanket. “Because we love you, Sandy. Because we’re going to take care of you and look after you and make sure you’re safe. Even if you can’t be with your—” She winced, unable to say ‘real’, though she knew Sandy believed that to be true. “Even if you can’t be with your _other_ family, you’ll still have us. Always, always, always. Even if... even if you never—”

“Never,” Sandy echoed again, though Tripitaka thought the word carried slightly less despair now than it had before.

“Even if you never see _that_ home again,” she pressed, willing her voice and her heart to stay strong for just a little longer, “you still have one with us. A home, and a family too. And whatever else happens, whatever else...” No luck: despite her best efforts, she felt herself begin to shake, tears clogging her throat, salt sticking to her tongue. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Because we’ll still be here, and we’ll still be yours.”

Sandy didn’t emerge or speak for some time, but the blanket wasn’t trembling so violently any more. Though she couldn’t see through the fabric, Tripitaka could easily imagine Sandy sitting quietly with the words, feeling them out, seeking truth and honesty, trying to figure out whether she could trust them. It was what her Sandy would have done, expert that she was in detecting deception; Tripitaka had always thought it was a god thing, but maybe it was simply a Sandy thing, picking apart the truth even as an infant.

Finally, with excruciating slowness, the tangle of curls inched its way out of the blanket-pile once more. Tripitaka watched, breath held, channelling all of the Scholar’s patience as the wide, pale eyes followed, then the trembling mouth, and finally most of her body, still clinging to the little fish.

“Mine?” she asked, in a whisper as tremulous as Tripitaka’s fluttering heart.

“Yours.” It didn’t matter that her voice broke, or that she was still shaking. Nothing mattered at all, only the slow-dawning comprehension on Sandy’s small, too-pale face. “All of us. Your family, your home. Always and forever.”

Sandy considered this, holding herself in perfect stillness. Only her hands moved, fingers clenching in little spams where she gripped the fish, pressing its battered body tight against her heart.

Finally, in a voice quaking with both fear and hope, she whispered, “Promise?”

Tripitaka thought, again, of her Sandy. A god who had lived her whole life alone, unloved and unwanted, hated by gods and demons and humans alike, by all the different stripes and colours of the world and its denizens. A lifetime of being told she was a demon, a monster, a wretched creature unworthy of love or trust; even now, months and months into the quest, she still felt the need sometimes to run off and hide herself away, to duck under her cloak or retreat into some shadowed, secret space all on her own. Even now, fully grown and powerful, her Sandy still had to look around at the rest of them — her friends and, yes, her family — and wonder if they really were hers.

Tripitaka’s answer, now just as then, came without even a moment’s hesitation.

“Yes, Sandy,” she breathed, spreading her arms wide in an invitation. “I promise.”

Sandy looked at her hands, at the blue warmth of her robes, the soft, flowing fabric and the soft, still skin. She looked down at herself, still partly hidden inside her blanket, and at the fish in her arms. She looked around her, at the cold, dark forest that so terrified her, the world that — if these sort-of-scary sort-of-safe strangers were really to be believed — was to become her new home.

She took a deep breath, summoning her courage in a way Tripitaka’s aching heart knew well.

And then, without another word, she launched herself out of the blanket and into her arms.

*


	13. Chapter 13

*

Tripitaka spent the rest of the evening waiting for Sandy to change back into herself.

After two and a half hours, it still hadn’t happened and she could not figure out why.

By all accounts, it should have: Sandy was as calm and content — as much at peace — as Tripitaka had ever seen her. The darkness had spread its shadows full-force over their little camp, and even so she remained quiet and still, less intimidated and certainly less afraid of the world around her. She wasn’t crying or whimpering any more, was no longer looking around herself with fear and misery, and she had stopped asking to go home. When Tripitaka spoke to her now and tried to touch her, she didn’t flinch or cower or hide herself away; she looked up at her not with the suspicion and misery they’d come to expect from her, but with something that seemed to be inching its way towards trust. 

She seemed, at long last, almost comfortable, connected not just to them but to herself as well, and Tripitaka was so sure she would become herself again as the others had after similar revelations. She was _so sure_...

But it didn’t happen. Nothing happened at all, and she didn’t—

“I don’t _understand_ ,” she complained to the others. “It worked fine with you two. Why not her?”

Pigsy shrugged. “She’s smaller. Maybe it takes longer for her to wrap her tiny brain around stuff.”

“Also,” Monkey volunteered, visibly trying not to smirk, “she’s, you know, Sandy. Which, uh...”

“...which means twice as long by itself,” Pigsy agreed, with a needlessly pointed glance at his plant.

Tripitaka rolled her eyes. “You’re both horrible.”

Still, though she couldn’t approve of their cutting jibes, she did draw a measure of comfort from them. Neither of them seemed particularly concerned by Sandy’s refusal to change back, and neither of them was pushing her to keep trying; indeed, even Kaedo seemed content to let the subject drop for now. Either they believed she’d done enough and that it really would just take a little longer for Sandy’s scrambled tiny mind to catch up, or else they’d simply accepted there was nothing they could do until the morning and were content to let the child work through her feelings on her own in the meantime.

“Just be patient with her,” Pigsy said, as if reading her thoughts. “At least the kid’s heading in the right direction now, you know?”

True enough. Sandy was sitting quietly in front of the fire, watching the flames in their crackling dance. Content and calm, every now and then her little head would nod and jerk as she struggled against drowsiness. No tears, no trembling, none of the misery that had held her in its clutches before; she was a child, nothing more, entranced by the firelight and getting very, very sleepy.

It was a good sign, Tripitaka knew, that she was settled and comfortable enough now that sleeping was on the table at all.

Monkey, lounging beside her and watching Sandy with unabashed fondness, seemed to share the sentiment.

“Look at her, monk,” he said, elbowing her lightly in the ribs. His smile was soft, lit up by the glow from the fire, and Tripitaka felt as touched by that as she was by Sandy’s newfound calm. “The kid’s totally zonked. There’s no way she’s going to figure out all that messy emotional stuff until she’s gotten some shut-eye.”

Pigsy snorted, amused but equally fond. “You hear that?” he quipped, his soft eyes fixed not on Sandy but on Monkey. “Guy spends five minutes as a kid and suddenly he’s our resident child-care expert.”

Typically preening, Monkey threw back, “Tell me I’m wrong, big guy.”

“Wrong or not,” Kaedo interrupted, “ _I_ could use some shut-eye.”

And he punctuated the point with a loud, purposefully obnoxious yawn.

Pigsy sighed, clearly exasperated with them both. “You know how much I hate to agree with Mr. Ego over there,” he said to Tripitaka, casting a sideways look at Monkey. “But he’s got a point. Let her get a good night’s sleep, let her know for sure that she’s safe with us. If she’s back to normal in the morning, all the better. If she’s not, we try again. Either way, at least we’ll be coming at it well rested.”

It was a good point — and, admittedly, rather less trying to hear it from him than from Monkey — and one that made Tripitaka acutely aware of her own exhaustion. She felt like she’d barely had a moment to herself since this began, and certainly not a moment of actual peace or rest. The idea of settling down for the night, though not ideal with Sandy still so small, sang a siren’s song to her aching, weary bones.

“You really think she’ll be okay out here all night?” she asked nervously.

“Of course!” Monkey crowed, cutting in before either of the others could say anything. “She’s got _me_ looking out for her, doesn’t she? You really think I’d let anything bad happen to my number one fan?”

Probably not, at that. Since overcoming his fear of hurting the fragile human toddler, Monkey had thrown himself head-first in the other direction, becoming a clucky, over-protective parent.

It was more touching than Tripitaka would ever let him know.

“There might still be demons out there,” she mused, knowing even as she said it that she was conjuring phantoms where there were none. “I wouldn’t normally ask you to stand guard, Monkey, but given the circumstances...”

“Say no more.” His staff was already in hand, a dervish of power, whirling and swinging in pursuit of imaginary enemies. “The little brat can sleep safe and sound, knowing that the Monkey King is watching over her.” This to Tripitaka, then repeated more loudly for Sandy’s benefit: “You hear that, tiny plankton-thing? You’re safe with me!”

Sandy was, of course, wholly unimpressed, being rather more occupied in throwing fistfuls of grass into the fire.

Tripitaka, meanwhile, glowered at Monkey. “Plankton? Really?”

“Should’ve thought of that one myself,” Pigsy mused, snorting.

Kaedo, rolling his eyes at all three of them, dragged the conversation forcibly back onto its track, namely by stalking over to the busy toddler and hauling her up onto her feet.

“Hey, Sandy!” he coaxed, poking her little forehead. “You feel like going to bed and getting some sleep?”

Sandy shoved him with her tiny fists, clearly furious at being pulled away from her task. “Go away! Stupid—”

“Yeah, yeah. ‘Stupid human’.” He glanced over his shoulder, sticking his tongue out at Monkey. “If you feel like teaching her any other phrases at all, that’d be just great.”

Tripitaka smothered a smile, forced herself to remain focused on the task at hand, as he was. “You do need to get some sleep,” she said to Sandy. “You can stay with any one of us, whoever makes you feel the safest, but Kaedo’s right: it’s way past your bedtime.”

Sandy’s preoccupied annoyance melted away at that; she looked around herself, at the strange surroundings that weren’t quite familiar enough yet to be a home, and at these not-quite-strangers she didn’t quite trust enough to call family. She looked at them all, lingering on Tripitaka the longest, and then she let out a low, pitiful whimper.

“Don’t want to,” she whined. “Cold. Dark. _Scared_.”

It was the first time she’d voiced any kind of misery since their earlier conversation, since she threw herself out of her safe hiding space and into Tripitaka’s arms, since she let herself be held and comforted by someone who called herself ‘hers’. A more manageable kind of misery, Tripitaka hoped: the typical resistance to bedtime that came to all small children, and the understandable wariness of laying down to sleep in a strange environment.

“It’s okay.” Tripitaka crept towards her, crouching in front of her just like she did earlier. “It’s your first night in a strange new place, and you’re right: it’s cold and it’s dark. It’s okay to be a little bit scared. But I promise you, Sandy: you’re safe with us. Monkey’s big and strong and very powerful, and he’s going to stay up the whole night to make sure nothing bad happens to you.”

Sandy cut a lopsided glance at Monkey, who nodded his affirmation and twirled his staff in a dramatic flourish. “Bestest protector in the whole wide world,” he crowed, grinning and winking at her. “No demon or monster can get past the Great Sage Equal of Heaven!”

“That’s debatable,” Pigsy muttered.

Tripitaka shot him a warning look, then turned back to Sandy. “You can stay with me in my bedroll if you like,” she offered, more in the hopes of keeping an eye on the girl than out of any feint at generosity. “Or if you’d prefer to sleep with Pigsy or Kaedo, that’s—”

“No.” Sandy squinted up at her, expression inscrutable. Tripitaka anticipated resistance, perhaps even more tears, but instead she got a quivering, barely audible, “ _You_.”

Tripitaka would never admit how much that meant to her, how deeply it touched her: the starry-eyed hope on Sandy’s face, the way her eyes seemed to grow wider, gleam brighter, the way her face regained a little of its colour, the way she really, truly seemed, against all the odds, to feel safer with the idea of spending the night in her arms.

“Me?” she heard herself whisper, suddenly more tearful even than the anxious toddler.

Sandy nodded, then threw her small, fragile arms around her. “You.”

Holding her tight, hugging her tighter, Tripitaka thought that word had never sounded so beautiful.

*

Surprisingly, it was Tripitaka who had the most trouble getting to sleep.

Sandy, no doubt long accustomed to having to share cramped sleeping spaces with her many brothers and sisters, snuggled up against her like it was the simplest, most natural thing in the world to be pressed up against another body. She burrowed effortlessly into the warm space between the blankets and Tripitaka’s robes, wriggled around for a few seconds, and settled almost immediately into a quiet, steady rhythm of breathing.

It was, Tripitaka thought sadly, the quickest and easiest she’d ever seen Sandy settle down to sleep.

Usually, with her Sandy, it would be hours before she relaxed at all, and longer still before she let herself fall asleep. She was always so much alert, even when holding herself in absolute stillness, and by some combination of insomnia and her usual hyper-awareness of the world around her it was always an arduous task to loosen up her muscles and her eyelids. Even before the village that had left her haunted, she’d always slept with one eye half-open, and since leaving that place Tripitaka knew she hadn’t slept at all.

The same certainly could not be said of this Sandy. For all that she was afraid of the dark and unhappy in the cold, for all that this place was still new and a little scary to her, still she drifted off within minutes, like it was no effort at all. Her head rested slackly on Tripitaka’s chest, her face almost entirely buried in her scarf, and she moved very little as sleep overtook her, heavy and deep and complete, the uninterrupted rest of a small child in the aftermath of a very long and very exhausting day.

For Tripitaka, it was not quite so easy.

In the first, she was not used to having to share her bed with another soul, even one as tiny and unobtrusive as a zonked-out toddler. Being more or less the only child at the Scholar’s monastery, and later the only teenager, she’d had her own private spaces for as long as she could remember; she couldn’t recall a time where she’d slept anywhere other than alone and in relative privacy.

Shared sleeping spaces were for the monks, the holy men and women who walked a path of discomfort and selflessness by choice; for her, the ward and daughter of a Scholar, a girl who’d never had any intention of choosing that path for herself — not until the fates forced her hand, at least — she’d always had her own bedroom.

Things changed once the quest began, of course, but not as much as she’d anticipated. Sleeping around a campfire with gods snoring and fidgeting in every direction had been an adjustment, to be sure, but by that point she’d had so many other things to adjust to it hadn’t exactly been at the top of her priority list; her bedroll was still her own, after all, and even when they’d thought she was a boy all three gods had always been content to give her plenty of space to herself, whether for bathing or bedtime or anything else at all.

It was as much privacy as anyone could hope for in a world suddenly filled with new companions, and even now, so long after those rocky beginnings, Tripitaka rarely had any reason to share her blankets, her pillows, or her body with anyone at all.

Unsurprisingly, then, it took her a long time to relax, adjusting to the feel of someone breathing beside her, the way Sandy would twitch or shift in her sleep, the way she would cocoon herself in the blanket like she was trying to steal all the warmth she could get and take it into herself. She was a very small child, but that wasn’t especially helpful; indeed, for the first few hours, Tripitaka was terrified to move at all, frightened that she would crush the little thing by accident.

She slipped into slumber with excruciating slowness, and did not stay asleep for very long.

Twice, she woke herself up, jolted back to consciousness by some imaginary sound or shift in the air, waking more alert and aware than she normally would be, worried and afraid that the small, vulnerable bundle in her arms would need her protection, that she’d be hurt, that she’d be—

Twice she woke herself, needlessly and without cause.

Twice more, and with better reason, Sandy woke her.

The first time, not unexpectedly, she was dreaming.

This Sandy, much like her older counterpart, didn’t really move about much in her sleep. She was nothing like Monkey, who rolled around and flailed his arms and generally caused mayhem for anyone within half a league of his bedroll, or Pigsy, who snored like a hurricane when he was on his back and shifted positions endlessly to make himself more comfortable; nothing like either of them, Sandy generally curled up on her side and stayed there through the night, more or less unmoving, whether she actually fell asleep or not.

Her younger self was much the same way. She’d cocooned herself between Tripitaka’s robes and the blanket, and there she’d stayed until now, still and silent and utterly dead to the world.

Tripitaka woke immediately when she started to thrash and whine. For her own part, she’d only been dozing lightly anyway, still too conscious of the fragile little body pressed up against her own, not really trusting herself to move without hurting her and not exhausted enough yet to fall asleep in spite of herself, and the sudden shift from stillness and silence to sound and motion jerked her instantly back to full awareness.

“Sandy?”

Her voice was husky, rusted from drowsiness, and it sounded strange in the smothered bundle of blanket, subdued and swallowed, like the crunch of footsteps in thick snow.

If Sandy heard her, she gave no sign; she was whimpering more loudly now, strangled and clearly scared.

It made Tripitaka ache a little, that she was so easily able to recognise her fear even from the depths of sleep, that this version of Sandy was so free with her darker emotions — and that she had so many of them in the first place, even when she was so small — that she knew it without thought. Her Sandy, the one who buried her feelings and did not understand them, could be terrified beyond all words and Tripitaka doubted she would ever know about it.

This one didn’t hide her feelings at all. She didn’t wake up, but her whimpers became sniffles, and then cries.

Another difference between them, Tripitaka thought sadly. Her Sandy was always the most silent when she was in pain.

It was hardly a surprise, of course, that this little one would have troubling dreams. In truth, Tripitaka would have been more worried if she had slept through the whole night undisturbed. It was a normal reaction for a child swept away from her home, forced to adjust to a strange place filled with strange people and strange things, a thousand good reasons to be afraid: a few bad dreams were, all things considered, nothing to worry about at all.

Still, though, she worried. Because it seemed that was her fate in life: to worry about these fragile, simple gods who were her most precious companions.

She responded without thinking. As unaccustomed as she was to all of this, it seemed that comforting a distressed child was second nature even to one as lacking in nurturing instincts as she was. She pulled Sandy in closer, stroking circles over her too-thin back, and murmured gentle, automatic placations to the top of her head.

“You’re safe,” she told her, trying to soothe and balm her dreams rather than wake her up and risk disturbing her even more. “I said that you’d be safe with us, and you are. You’re safe, Sandy, okay? You’re safe.”

Over and over, she repeated it, the word ‘safe’ punctuated by her name, over and over and over, hoping that one or both would eventually sink in and lull her back into calmness.

It worked. She didn’t really expect it to — it certainly wouldn’t have worked on the older Sandy — but some small part of what she’d said, or else the sound of her voice, must have broached the dark corners of this Sandy’s dream because her cries tapered back off into softer whimpers and the thrashing slowed considerably.

She didn’t wake. She didn’t speak, at least not with words. She just settled back into her slumber, as though the whispered words were all she really needed. As though Tripitaka’s voice was enough, truly, to make her feel safe.

Tripitaka pushed the tangles of her hair back from her face and watched as the tension smoothed out, all the pain and panic easing to something softer, little by little, breath by breath.

“Good,” she whispered, rocking her gently. Then, for good measure: “No more bad dreams, okay? You’re safe with us. We’re your family, we’re your home, and you’re safe.”

Sandy gurgled, burying her face in Tripitaka’s robes. Still asleep, she couldn’t possibly know where she was or who was holding her, but still, in a peaceful mumble, she echoed, “ _Safe_.”

Tripitaka swallowed thickly, finding herself suddenly having to blink back tears. “That’s right,” she managed, pulling the blanket a little tighter around them both. “Home and safe, and so loved.”

“Safe,” Sandy whispered again, then snuggled deeper into her arms and grew still and silent once more.

This time, when her breathing found its slow, steady, sleeping rhythm, Tripitaka smiled, kissed her little forehead, and allowed her own to do the same.

*

The second time Sandy woke her, it was very, very different.

For a start, it was later.

Earlier, in fact: Tripitaka woke, groggy this time, suggesting she’d finally been sleeping deeply, to the first faint rays of almost-dawn, to birds chirping in the trees overhead, to Monkey snoring loudly — how predictable, she thought hazily, that he would fall asleep at his post — and to Sandy standing over her and kicking her in the ribs.

“Tripitaka!”

To Sandy—

To the sound of her voice, hoarse but _hers_. 

To her eyes, wide and pale but _hers_ , and to a face lined with confusion and exhaustion and—

And _Sandy_ , all of her, and the stunned disbelief cut through the lingering fuzziness of half-sleep, through everything, everything, every—

Tripitaka leaped up to her feet, wide-eyed, breathless. “Sandy!?”

Sandy, equally wide-eyed, stared down at the rumpled bedroll, down at her own naked body, covered not even a little bit by the shredded remains of her too-small clothes, and said, “Is there something I should know about?”

What little embarrassment Tripitaka might have felt on her behalf was crushed so swiftly it might as well have not existed at all, strangled and smothered, swallowed up by relief and the deepest, most inexpressible joy. Not caring at all for the god’s nakedness, nor for her confusion or social anxiety — back in full-force, if the tension in her shoulders was any measure — she threw herself at her and hugged her so hard she was sure she would end up cracking both their ribs.

“Sandy,” she choked again, sobbing the name against her collarbones. “Don’t you _ever_ do that to me again!”

Sandy made a strangled noise; Tripitaka felt it vibrate all through her body. “What, exactly, should I not do?”

“It’s...” Another sob, shaking them both, then, for what she hoped would be the last time: “It’s a _long_ story.”

*

She didn’t wake the others.

Perhaps she should have. They were worried too, after all, and they cared just as deeply as she did; surely they deserved to know that everything was back to normal, that Sandy was theirs again, whole and unscathed. 

They were all resting so peacefully, though, even Monkey, and as tired as they’d all been when they went to bed, she couldn’t bear the idea of breaking them out of their much-needed respite before the sun was even fully risen. Good news wasn’t the same as bad, she thought: it could wait until daylight and no-one would be the worse for it.

In any case, somewhat selfishly, she wanted some time with Sandy alone.

Time to explain, time to talk things through, and time to revel in her face.

Time to revel, too, in being with the only other person who responded to the words ‘wish-fulfilment magic’ with a crinkled brow, a bitten lip, and a baffled-sounding, “What?”

Tripitaka laughed, light and sweet and comfortable. “That,” she said, feeling warmed all over, “is _exactly_ what I said.”

It was usually a difficult and wearying task, trying to explain anything to Sandy, but not this time. This time, it was refreshing, even delightful, to not be the only one who didn’t immediately glean a thousand details from three small words. Wish-fulfilment magic, the only explanation Kaedo or the Scroll of Knowledge had ever given; in some ways it was not enough, in others it was entirely too much.

Perhaps they didn’t need to understand it all, she thought. Perhaps it was enough, now that the damage had been reversed, to simply know what it had been: a magical clearing offering a lost, confused god the opportunity to better understand her emotions.

Her younger self had certainly managed that, Tripitaka mused, and explained as much to her older self now. That tiny, delicate toddler wore her heart entirely on her sleeve, every thought and feeling spilling out through her body or her voice, wailing or whimpering at everything that upset or startled her, hiding in blankets when the fear dug its claws in deep, taking no shame in admitting it for everyone to hear and see and know that she was scared.

“Oh,” Sandy said, when Tripitaka had talked her through as much as she could. Back now in her own tattered clothes, she sat next to Tripitaka with her hands in her lap, staring at the fire with her usual subdued reverie. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Tripitaka said, no less quietly but with passion. “It was my fault, not yours. I should never have pushed you to try and work through your feelings if you weren’t ready. I should never have—”

“You were right to push me.” Sandy’s eyes grew unfocused and distant; she sounded like she was speaking from far away. “I almost killed Pigsy’s plant, remember? My being ‘not ready’ had terrible consequences.”

Tripitaka sighed, swallowing the urge to reach out and touch her. After so long with the younger Sandy, acceptant as she was of all kinds of contact even when she was scared, it was a strange, sad thing to have to hold back again now. But she knew this Sandy, her Sandy, and she knew that trying to touch her when she was feeling vulnerable would surely end in discomfort for them both.

“It had consequences,” she agreed gently. “But so did trying to wish yourself into being ready when you weren’t.”

Sandy’s throat convulsed; it was the only part of her that moved at all. Her stillness was unsettling after her fidgety, squirmy smaller self, and it made Tripitaka think again of the life she lived between then and now, the years upon years of pain and loneliness, of hiding in the cold and dark, holding herself still in the shadows to stay alive, making friends out of the things that had so frightened her when she was younger.

She wanted so badly to touch her, hold her, comfort her with contact like she did her toddler-sized self, but they were so far apart from each other they might as well have never been the same person at all.

Still gazing sightlessly into the low-burning flames, Sandy looked like she wanted to say many things, none of them simple or comfortable. But when she finally spoke, all that came out was, “Thank you for bringing me back.”

Tripitaka sighed, feeling the warmth and relief start to bleed back out of her. This, she thought, was exactly what had caused so much trouble in the first place: Sandy, still and quiet, staring at nothing, hollow and shut down.

“You’re welcome,” Tripitaka said. “But Sandy, I think...”

“I know.” She sighed. “I’m just... disoriented. That’s all.”

“You were a child for quite a long time,” Tripitaka conceded, still frowning worriedly at her shadow-shrouded face, the lines of exhaustion deeper than ever. “It’s okay if you need some time to adjust to being yourself again.”

Sandy opened her mouth, then closed it again. “Thank you.”

Tripitaka shuffled back a few hand-spaces, giving her a little distance. Giving them both a little distance, perhaps, Sandy to grapple with what she’d just learned, all the trouble she’d just discovered she’d wrought, and herself to adjust to having her back: not the clear-eyed, well-adjusted Sandy she’d imagined would come with getting in touch with her feelings, but almost the same quiet, withdrawn, emotionally stunted god she’d been before.

It was jarring. A little unsettling, a little worrying, and very jarring.

After Pigsy, coming back from a shy, self-conscious, downtrodden version of himself to the cheery, confident, self-loving god he’d spent a thousand years growing up into, and Monkey, young and old so similar to each other in so many infuriating ways, she’d expected something more triumphant when Sandy rejoined them, perhaps a little more revelatory.

Maybe that was naïve of her. Wasn’t that why she’d fled last night, hiding in the forest and embracing the fantasy of keeping her small forever? Wasn’t that exactly what she’d been looking to do: undo her experience by force, raise her into something more well-adjusted, something more normal? Even then, perhaps especially then, she’d known that Sandy was like this, that her troubles were not so easily fixed as the others’. She’d _known_...

She said, very softly, “Do you want me to leave you alone for a bit?”

A not-so-simple question, apparently. Sandy spent a long time mulling it over, staring by turns at the fire and then down at her own hands, as if seeking secrets in the flames or the lines in her palms. Tripitaka studied her closely, trying to pierce the flickering firelit shadows that shrouded her expression, trying to find her eyes, the curve of her jaw, the lines of her mouth, any part of her at all that might give away some piece of what she was thinking.

But she was Sandy, herself again with all the good and bad habits that came with her, and Tripitaka could no more pierce her shadows when she pulled them around herself like this than she could follow her when she turned to mist and vanished into the ether. She could only watch, quiet and a little sad, and wait for her to find whatever answers she was searching for.

Finally, whispering the word to the flame, she decided, “No.” Her hands twisted in her lap, fluttering briefly into fists then slowly loosening, like she was wrestling with something just beyond her grasp. “I, um... having you close makes me feel safe.”

The warmth in Tripitaka’s chest reignited. Just a little, just the smallest little spark, but a spark even so, real and true and pure.

She thought of a frightened toddler whimpering in her arms as she slept, of a cocoon made of monks’ robes and blankets and a promise that this was home. She thought of Sandy, small and scared but growing braver, looking up at her for the first time with faith and trust.

She thought of her then, and she looked at her now, and she whispered, echoing with all the love in the world, “Safe.”

Sandy looked up, letting Tripitaka see her face in full for the first time: there was no shame or grief or pain in her eyes now, no threat of tears or tantrums, only a quiet sort of confusion, like she didn’t understand where the word had come from or why it had evoked so much deep feeling in her.

“I know it sounds strange,” she murmured, swallowing shyly. “I know...”

Tripitaka swallowed too, not with shyness but with emotion.

“No,” she said, throat tight. “It doesn’t sound strange at all.”

And she closed the space she’d only just put between them, took Sandy’s hand in hers, and marvelled at the way she didn’t flinch.

*

The others, when they woke, knew better than to make a big deal out of it.

Monkey and Pigsy might still have been revelling in every opportunity to give each other a hard time over their own returns to adulthood, but one look at Sandy’s hunched shoulders as they gathered around the fire for breakfast was enough for even Monkey to recognise that she wasn’t yet in the right place to do the same. Light-hearted or not, their gentle teasing took on a very different edge when she still felt like the whole mess was all her fault.

Monkey, always the best at dealing with her vulnerabilities — and this always a surprise, even now they all knew to expect it — grinned, booped her lightly on the nose just as he’d done so many times to her toddler-shaped self, and said, “Just so you know: little baby human you had the _best_ taste in heroes.”

Kaedo barked a dry laugh. “I think ‘heroes’ is pushing it a bit,” he quipped. “You just said you were awesome so many times the poor gullible kid had no choice but to buy it.” He spared Sandy only the briefest glance, a fleeting “Good to have you back,” and then went right back to antagonising Monkey, as though her presence was worth no more attention from either one of them.

Watching out of the corner of her eye, pretending not to, Tripitaka saw Sandy’s tense frame relax ever so slightly.

For a moment, at least.

Then her eyes fell on Pigsy, keeping his distance and making a silent point of keeping the plant in his hand at all times, and the discomfort returned as if it had never left at all.

“Um,” she said, to no-one in particular, then sighed and shook her head.

Pigsy studied her for a beat, then shrugged and turned away again. “Bet you’re starving, eh?” he said, in lieu of any commentary on her condition. “How about some pancakes?”

Sandy swallowed a couple of times, then said again, even lower, “Um.”

“Right.” He sighed. “Suppose the healthy appetite’s up and vanished now too, huh? Well, too bad: I want pancakes, so we’re having pancakes.”

The twinkle in his eye gave away the playfulness to his chiding. An attempt at normalcy, Tripitaka supposed, which might have worked, if Sandy had any grasp on what was normal in the first place. As it was, she only ducked her head, sighed, and mumbled, “I don’t—”

“Of course you don’t.” He looked her up and down a couple of times, just enough to make a point, not enough to make her any more uncomfortable than she already was, then pressed: “You can walk more than three paces without falling down now. You want something else, you can go and make your own.”

Sandy blinked a handful of times, as though trying to absorb a massive amount of information, then nodded.

Kaedo, meanwhile, was earnestly fascinated. “You can make pancakes?” he demanded of Pigsy, eyes comically wide and glinting with ill-disguised appetite. “In a forest? Out of, what, tree bark or something?”

Pigsy snorted. “Lad, I can make anything out of anything.” He set the plant down at his side, taking a little too much care not to look at Sandy as he did so, and went on, clearly delighted to have an appreciative audience in Kaedo, “Sit yourself down and watch a master at work.”

And so they settled, the five of them all together and themselves at last, into a morning routine that was comfortable and familiar and only the slightest bit awkward.

Tripitaka kept half her attention on the fire, seduced almost in spite of herself by the overwhelming breakfast-smell of Pigsy’s labours, and the other half on Sandy, sitting silently beside her. Reclusive, self-conscious, wringing her hands in her lap, she had the wretched, slightly queasy expression of one grappling with terrible guilt.

A silly thing to focus on, Tripitaka thought, all things considered. But she supposed that was just Sandy, one of the many things that set her apart from Monkey and Pigsy: where they so often needed to be told when their tactlessness or clumsiness had hurt someone else, Sandy was always so uncomfortably aware of her own missteps and mistakes.

The natural product, Tripitaka supposed, of a lifetime’s worth of being told she was monstrous, hideous, horrible. A lifetime of blame and hatred and disgust; little wonder if she found herself unable to let those instincts go.

Still, it stung a little to see, and all the more after so much time with her younger self, perfectly content in the way of all toddlers to destroy anything she touched and never spare a thought for the consequences.

Back to normal indeed, Tripitaka thought, sore-hearted and sympathetic.

It was no surprise, then, that she turned down the plate Pigsy offered her.

“Not hungry,” she mumbled at her hands, wringing them over and over.

Pigsy rolled his eyes. “How did I know you were going to say that?” He glanced at Tripitaka, brief but meaningful, and muttered, “Are you sure she’s herself again? Still sounds like a sulking toddler to me.”

Tripitaka opened her mouth to tell him to be gentle, but she never got the chance: Monkey, being not much more mature than his own youthful counterpart, cut her off with a loud, obnoxious giggle.

“What?” he demanded when she turned her glare on him instead, spreading his arms with faux-innocence. “Big guy’s got a point.” To Sandy, placatingly, he added, “I mean, it’s still cute. You’re still really cute and all.”

Sandy raised an eyebrow. “Am I being mocked?” she asked. “I feel like I’m being mocked.”

“Nah, you’re adorable.” Glowing with that particular kind of affection he only ever seemed able to express through playfulness and teasing, he stood up and sauntered over to Tripitaka’s still-rumpled bedroll. “But hey! If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe an old friend?”

And so saying, he picked up the abandoned toy fish, dusted it down a little, and threw it to her with a huge grin.

Sandy caught the thing instinctively, as she did every projectile that came at her, and frowned at it with confusion.

“Um,” she said.

For once, Tripitaka couldn’t deny that it was the most appropriate response to the situation at hand.

She kept her eye on the toy rather than the god, the little thing all battered and grass-stained, rather the worse for wear after a day and night in the care of a toddler, two young gods, and briefly a pack of demons. She could feel Sandy scrutinising the little thing from all angles, trying to make sense of what it was and why Monkey seemed to think it might mean something to her, and if she wasn’t so afraid of ruining the moment by drawing attention to the fact, she might have reiterated his point that she was, indeed, adorable.

Instead, softening her smile to something Sandy might be able to stomach in her present state, she explained, “Your younger self really liked that little thing.”

“Oh.” Sandy turned it over in her hands, then held it up to the fire, studying it even more closely. “Why?”

“Because kids are weird and dumb,” Monkey said, with authority. “And you were _really_ weird and dumb.”

Kaedo snickered, then briefly sobered, then snickered again. “I mean, you also ate grass,” he pointed out, barely apologetic. “So... basically that, yeah.”

Sandy ignored this latter revelation with the detached indifference of one who had almost certainly eaten far more unpleasant things to keep herself alive.

“I don’t understand,” she said instead, mostly to Tripitaka. “Why would any version of me care for a filthy scrap of one of Pigsy’s shirts?”

Tripitaka briefly considered dismissing the question with a withering glare at Monkey and another ‘it’s a long story’. But Sandy had an odd look on her face as she studied the thing, something that seemed to run more deeply than simple confusion; her mouth kept twitching, seemingly of its own accord, as though some buried, subconscious part of her was straining to remember the words to a song or reclaim a lost memory, fractured and just out of reach.

“You were scared,” she explained, choosing her words very carefully. “You’d just woke up in a strange place, surrounded by strangers, and you were scared. Pigsy... the younger one, I mean... he was scared too, I think, and...” She paused, realising with a flush that she was still speaking to Sandy like she was her smaller self, enunciating and condescending to her as she would a very small child. She cleared her throat, trying again. “I mean, uh...”

Monkey rolled his eyes. “She means what I said: kids are weird and dumb.”

Pigsy made a disgruntled noise, then sighed and focused rather too intently on his breakfast. “I was better at handling kids when I was one myself,” he admitted. Then, to Sandy, “Better at handling you, too, from what I hear.”

“Oh,” Sandy said, still frowning at the fish. “In that case, um... thank you?”

Tripitaka reached out, found her wrist and squeezed lightly. “He made it for you,” she said, tilting her head at the little thing. “You were crying, you were overwhelmed, and you were understandably very scared. And even though he felt the same way, he put his own fears to the side and made you that silly thing out of his old shirt. So that you’d have something to hold, something to make you feel...”

“...safe.”

The word was a rasp, hoarse and shaking; it was barely audible, but still it carried. Under Tripitaka’s fingers, under the worn, hole-riddled fabric of her sleeve, Sandy’s pulse jumped and twitched.

“Yeah,” Tripitaka whispered, with all the softness and sweetness the moment, and the god, deserved. “Safe.”

 _And you were,_ she didn’t add. _You were safe, and you are safe, and you will always, always be safe with us_.

Seeming to hear it — the sentiment, if not the precise words — Sandy’s breath caught jaggedly in her throat. For a few long moments, she just sat there, staring down at the worn, battered toy like she didn’t really see it at all. A few fractured heartbeats counted out against Tripitaka’s fingers, and then all the confusion started to fade. All the disorientation, all the numbness and emptiness, all of it bleeding out like the cleansing blood of a healthy, necessary wound.

She blinked, not with confusion now but with something else, something much deeper. She blinked and she blinked, and Tripitaka squeezed her wrist until there was nothing else in the world but that trembling, staccato point of contact.

 _It’s okay_ , she didn’t say, etching the words instead against Sandy’s tattered sleeve, against the tattered pulse hidden underneath. _You’re safe, you’re home, and it’s okay_.

Sandy swallowed, nodded, then bowed her head over the battered little fish-shaped toy, and quietly started to cry.

*


	14. Chapter 14

*

“So,” Kaedo mused. “Looks like nothing much has changed after all.”

This after it was all over.

After Sandy’s moment of raw emotion had run its inevitable course, after her tears had subsided to hiccups and then to her usual silence. After the rest of them had finished their breakfast and they’d all settled into a comfortable routine of clearing away their things and getting ready to decamp and begin the new day’s journeying. After they’d accepted that the strangeness was finally over, that the mysterious wish-fulfilment magic had run its course completely and left them all mostly unscathed. After Monkey and Pigsy slipped back into the playful antagonism that was their typical mode of communication, after Sandy nervously let herself be pulled along too, if only a little bit.

Observant, clever boy that he was, Kaedo spoke up only after all of those things.

Tripitaka, recognising the comment for what it was, played along. “What’s that?”

“Nothing’s changed,” Kaedo said again, gesturing flamboyantly at the three gods. “Monkey’s still the same arrogant buffoon he’s always been, Pigsy’s still an oversized, soft-bellied pushover, and Sandy’s still an emotionally stunted disaster. Between the three of them, did anyone actually learn anything?”

Pigsy grunted, more amused than offended, as was typical for him. It was a delightful, heart-warming thing to see the return to his careless confidence, Tripitaka thought privately, after so long spent watching his younger self struggle and self-flagellate and pull himself almost to pieces in his efforts to become better and tougher than he was.

“Apparently,” he remarked, rolling his eyes good-naturedly, “I learned how to make baby toys out of my old clothes.”

Sandy, having tucked the little fish into her belt ‘for safe keeping’, hummed her agreement. “It’s a good skill to have,” she murmured, then flushed. “Or, um, so I’ve heard.”

Tripitaka patted her arm, smothering a fond smile. “I think we’ve learned more than just that,” she said.

“Right,” Kaedo retorted with a snicker. “We also learned that teaching you self-reliance is a lost cause.”

“I don’t know about that,” Monkey said, surprising them all with his seriousness. “She did bring us all back. I mean, okay, so maybe it was through the power of ‘positive thinking’ or whatever and not, you know, by actually doing anything productive... and okay, so maybe she kind of had to fall back on squishy baby Pigsy to save her from demons. And okay, so she...” He paused, furrowing his brow. “Wait, what was my point again?”

Tripitaka sighed. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Monkey.”

She sobered swiftly, though, on catching the look on his face, the serious way he was watching her.

And not only her, she realised. He was watching Sandy and Pigsy too, his sharp eyes narrowed with uncharacteristic perceptiveness, like he was seeing them properly for the first time.

Like he was trying to see them, at least, in his awkward not-especially-good-at-looking-at-things sort of way.

It was a subtle shift, but a noticeable one, and all the more so in him. Monkey, who so often kept his distance so that he wouldn’t have to think or feel too hard or too much. Monkey, who prided himself on staying aloof and not caring, on stretching himself out as far away from his companions as he could possibly get, playing up his ego and his arrogance to keep them from getting too close. He, who so often insisted he didn’t need anyone, was looking at his friends now like maybe a part of him remembered how his younger self felt to see them for the first time and think, _family_.

A subtle shift, yes, but to Tripitaka, who had seen both sides of him, as blinding and dazzling as the morning sun.

It was in the way he kept close, making sure he never strayed too far from Sandy, the way he would hover and cut sly glances at her, still a little protective even now she was back to normal. It was in the way he was suddenly softer when he traded barbs and insults with Pigsy, taking a moment to gauge his mood before lashing out with the next quip or riposte. Like maybe he was starting to learn the difference between playfulness and cruelty, like maybe some small part of him remembered the other Pigsy, the downtrodden, self-conscious boy who had been bullied and pushed around enough.

Tripitaka thought of the younger Monkey, vulnerable despite his best efforts not to be. She thought of how, crushed he was, how heartbroken to learn that his fellow gods — the ones he’d been so quick to insist weren’t family, even as the word made his voice crack and catch — had assumed the worst of him, so devastated to watch the place he’d imagined was home as it crumbled to dust around him, lost to the lying annals of history.

She recalled, too, the moment he turned back into himself, the moment of making peace with a new home, a new family, a safe haven carved out of firewood and compassion, the one place in this new world that so despised him where he would only ever be wanted. A place where he belonged, knowing that he could trust the people he chose to belong with, knowing that they trusted him in turn, and believed in him completely.

With good reason, she thought, watching his face grow warm.

“Whatever,” he muttered, coughing. “We done navel-gazing?”

“Yes,” Tripitaka said, in the same breath as Sandy said, “No.”

Predictably, she flinched when the others all turned to stare at her, ducking behind the curtain of her hair, trying to hide her face from their prying eyes. Tripitaka, recalling the wails and sobs of her younger self, didn’t know whether to be comforted or saddened by this return to form. It was a stark contrast to Pigsy, whose youthful shyness had been thoroughly eviscerated by the centuries of age and experience that came after; Sandy, it seemed, had only retreated further into herself the older she got.

No doubt trying to make it easier for her, Monkey slipped into step beside her and slung an amicable arm across her shoulders.

“You got something to share, oh quiet one?” he wheedled. “Because if it’s about how awesome I am...”

“Trust me,” Pigsy chimed in with a melodramatic groan, “we already know.”

Monkey, of course, ignored him. “It’d better be about how awesome I am,” he said to Sandy, a bite of seriousness hidden under the swagger and bravado. “Because I really love to hear about how awesome I am. And that’s the _only_ thing I love to hear about. So maybe you should talk about that. You know, instead of anything stupid...”

Tripitaka, understanding what he was getting at, covered her mouth with her sleeve to hide her smile.

Sandy, evidently not understanding anything, wriggled out from under his arm. “I don’t... no, it’s not.”

“It’d _better_ be,” Monkey said again, firmer now. “Because if it’s any of that other stuff? All that stupid ‘woe is me’ self-blame apologetic-sorry stuff? You can forget it. We don’t do that stuff here. And you...” His voice cracked; Tripitaka watched as his jaw blanched pale with the effort of getting it back under control. “ _You_ definitely don’t do that stuff. Not about this. Okay?”

“I have to,” Sandy said quietly. “It was my fault. All of it. You all suffered because of me. You—”

“ _We_ turned out fine.” He seemed nervous; rather than looking her in the eye, he was peering around himself like he expected an attack at any moment. “Pigsy grew up tougher, learned to be all comfortable in his skin and whatever. Learned to love himself and his body, all that self-affirming blah-blah-blah stuff. And I got... I mean, I think this whole disaster proves I’ve always been awesome, but I got even more awesome. Like, changed-the-whole-world awesome.”

His eyes darkened as he said the last part, the faintest glimmer giving away how deeply that particular truth still cut. Tripitaka swallowed, stepped towards him, whispering so low that only he could possibly hear, “Monkey...”

“Yeah.” He wrenched away, cleared his throat noisily, then whirled back to Sandy, with balled fists. “But _you_... you didn’t turn out fine. You got hurt. You got pain. You got all that cold-dark-scared stuff that little tiny baby you hated so much. You got _screwed_ , okay? And you don’t...” Another hitch in his voice, giving away the depth of his feeling, but this time he didn’t bother trying to control it. “You don’t get to apologise for that. You hear me? You just _don’t_.”

Sandy growled. “I hurt you,” she said again. “All of you. I—”

“Right. Because that dumb stupid village hurt _you_. Because the whole dumb stupid world hurt you, again and again and again. Because that stuff’s been happening to you for so long, so much, of course you didn’t know how to deal with it. But that’s not on you, okay? It’s not on you to... to...”

He stopped, shaking his head, as if he couldn’t go on.

Very softly, Sandy said, “I’m not a child any more, Monkey.”

Monkey’s fist clenched for a moment, then fell open.

“No,” he said. “You’re not. That chi— that little brat, she was small and squishy and useless. She was scared of the dark and scared of the cold and she was so... she was so lonely she thought some doofus in a crown was the coolest, most awesome thing she’d ever seen. I mean, she wasn’t wrong, but...” He coughed, then forced a quavering grin. “You’re nothing like that kid, okay? You’re tough, you’re powerful, you’re maybe a tenth as awesome as me...”

Sandy looked understandably rather unimpressed by this back-handed compliment. “As much as that?” she deadpanned, with a wisp of a smile.

His laughter was rich and comfortable, paving over the lingering cracks in his voice. “Well, maybe not _quite_ that much. But that’s not the point.”

“Of course it’s not.”

Monkey glared. “The _point_ ,” he pressed irritably, “is that you — this you, you know, the real you — you’re not scared of anything. You’re not scared, and you’re not...” He cleared his throat again, averting his eyes again with a shyness reminiscent not of his own younger self but of Pigsy’s. “I mean, uh... you don’t have to be. Have no reason to be. The, uh... the other thing.”

“Lonely?” Sandy asked, hesitant and just as shy herself. “Or, um... squishy and useless?”

“The first one.” He was flushing now, growing moody and sullen the way he did sometimes when trying to talk through deep feelings; in his own ego-addled way, Tripitaka thought, he was little better at dealing with his than Sandy was with hers. “You don’t have to be the first thing. That one. Because you’ve got us. Like what the monk keeps yammering on about all the time: home and family and all that stupid pointless stuff.”

Tripitaka, recalling how much meaning those words had held to him as a young boy, secretly suspected that it wasn’t quite so stupid or pointless to him as he wanted them to believe. She watched his eyes, his jaw, both of them softening as he looked at Sandy, and she remembered the way his younger self had softened too, as he looked around himself at the sort-of strangers who promised him that they believed in him.

 _Family_. The word had brought him back to himself, just as _home_ and _safe_ had done for Sandy. What he was saying now, Tripitaka knew, held a deep, personal, and powerful meaning.

She didn’t know if Sandy could see any of that. She was staring fixedly at the ground, not at Monkey, but the tension in her shoulders made it clear that she was listening to every word.

“I don’t know that I’d call it pointless,” she said, voicing Tripitaka’s private thoughts with her usual quietness. “Or stupid.”

“Yeah, well, it is.” He softened a fraction more as he said it, though, like maybe a part of him wanted her to see that he didn’t really mean it. “But it’s also true. And that’s the part that matters. Because you... we...”

He stopped, wringing his hands.

Pigsy, no doubt trying to ‘help’, quipped, “Breathe slowly, tough guy.”

Monkey glowered, but did so just the same.

“Okay, look,” he said, trying again. “We’ve all done dumb stuff, okay? We’ve all hurt people, by accident or maybe not so much by accident. And I... this whole crappy world is kind of on me, you know? And you... all that stuff where you don’t know your own feelings or whatever, all the bad stuff inside you, the stuff that turned you from an adorable little scaredy-brat into... well, _you_. That’s all my fault, all that stuff. But you’ve never... not even once... you’ve _never_...”

He trailed off, clearly unable to finish, and turned helplessly to Tripitaka to bail him out.

She did, of course, stepping lithely between them with a smile, squeezing his shoulder until she felt his muscles relax. She kept her face angled towards Sandy, so that Monkey wouldn’t see how proud she was, so that he wouldn’t get embarrassed and feel the need, as he all too often did, to overcompensate with bravado and arrogance and damaging behaviours.

“You’ve never asked him to apologise,” she said to Sandy, speaking very slowly. “Not for the part he played in creating the world that hurt you. Not for the time he tried to kill you. Not for any of the many, many, _many_ stupid things he’s done to get us all into trouble since we started the quest.”

Sandy swallowed. “He’s trying to make amends,” she said weakly.

“He’s your _friend_ ,” Tripitaka countered. “And you know he’d never do you harm on purpose. Just like he... just like we all know that you would never have done this to us on purpose.”

Behind her, the air grew cold as Monkey bobbed his head in frantic affirmation. “So none of that stuff, okay? No apologies, no self-loathing, no telling us you’re sorry. Never, ever, _ever_.”

And as he darted past her and dragged the unwitting Sandy into a bone-crushing hug, Tripitaka turned to Kaedo and asked, in a shimmering whisper, “Still think they haven’t learned anything?”

Kaedo, watching the two of them with suspiciously damp eyes, said nothing at all.

*

And that, at least for the most part, was that.

Their things all neatly packed away, their makeshift campsite all cleared out and left fallow; all that remained to mark that anyone had been there were a few scattered salt-stains discolouring the grass.

Sandy spent a long time staring at them, features twisted, jaw clenched white. She didn’t look up, didn’t look at Pigsy or his life-saving plant, but Tripitaka could tell she was thinking about it even so.

She didn’t try to talk to her about it. Not yet.

She just said, mainly to Kaedo, who seemed to be their resident expert in these things, “Should we try to do something about that grove? The one that did all this damage in the first place?”

Kaedo shot her an incredulous look, mirrored by Pigsy and Monkey. “You really don’t know anything at all about wish-fulfilment magic, do you?” he snorted, infuriatingly amused.

Tripitaka’s glare, she felt, spoke for itself. “I think we’ve already established that I don’t.”

Rather more patiently than his youthful companion, Pigsy explained, “The place did its job. Try all you like, you’ll never find it again.”

That offered little more clarity than Kaedo’s ill-concealed derision, if the truth be told, but Tripitaka was too weary to pursue it further.

“So long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else,” Sandy mumbled, her jagged tone making it quite clear she didn’t want to spend any more time thinking about that place than she absolutely had to.

“It won’t,” Pigsy said, fiddling with his rake to keep from having to look at her. “Didn’t even really hurt us, either, if you want to get technical about it. Trouble might have come a-calling, true enough, but that was more the product of a certain someone’s adolescent ego than anything magical.”

This last, he punctuated with a pointed look at Monkey, who merely rolled his eyes and muttered, “Can we get back to the quest now, or what?”

Sandy squirmed, understandably uncomfortable, but Tripitaka was content to defer to the others on this. Evidently, they all knew much more on the subject than she did — even Monkey, much to her endless annoyance — and none of them seemed the least bit concerned about leaving the place unchecked. If they believed no further action was necessary — specifically, if Kaedo said so, he being the least likely one of them to choose an ill-advised shortcut out of laziness or boredom — she would bow her head and say no more about it.

Besides, in all honesty, she was grateful for the opportunity to just put the whole affair behind her and move on.

So, then, back to the quest, just as Monkey said.

Back to picking their way through the forest, a slow, serpentine meander through now-familiar terrain that brought them back to where they started. It was the second time in less than a week they’d been forced to retrace their steps, journeying backwards to move forwards, and Tripitaka couldn’t marvelling at the strange twists and turns of fate, the tangled threads that brought them time and again back to the same places for different reasons.

Monkey and Kaedo set a breakneck pace, each trying to outrun the other, with Pigsy trailing gamely along behind them, grumbling and complaining good-naturedly as he hauled their heavy-laden pack on his back.

Sandy, to no-one’s surprise, chose to bring up the rear. Subdued and quietly contemplative, though it was clear she wanted to be alone still she didn’t complain or resist when Tripitaka slipped into step beside her.

“How are you feeling?”

Subtlety was often wasted on Sandy, who took everything she heard literally, and this time was no exception.

“Hungry,” she decided after a beat. “Perhaps I should have let Pigsy feed me some of those pancakes after all.”

Tripitaka chuckled. “They were good pancakes.” Then, a little tentatively, “I think tiny toddler-you would have enjoyed them.”

“From what I recall of being a child,” Sandy mused, “I would have enjoyed anything that passed as remotely edible.” Spoken without inflection, which Tripitaka had learned from experience usually meant deep, years-buried feeling. Good or bad, she could not tell, but it was definitely there. “I remember being very hungry, very often. There wasn’t much to go around when I was growing up, and then...”

She didn’t finish. Unbidden, Tripitaka’s mind filled in the rest.

And then the life that came after: the dark, the cold, the loneliness and isolation and misery. Survival, and all the brutality and unpleasantness that went with it, so much that the gnawing pangs of hunger must have surely and swiftly become little more than ambient background noise.

Tripitaka felt her smile falter, then vanish completely. Her heart ached. Her stomach too, in sympathy.

“There was a moment,” she admitted, very quietly. “Just a moment, but I... I really wanted to keep you like that. Smaller, I mean. The child you were before that ‘and then’. A child who ate happily and hungrily, a child who slept easily and could be soothed without waking. A child who understood her feelings, who spoke out loud every thought that came into her head.”

“A noisy little troublemaker,” Sandy countered, rather less generously. “Or so I’ve been told.”

Tripitaka’s laughter was wet and strangled. “A beautiful little troublemaker,” she said, and meant it with every beat of her heart. “You were adorable, Sandy, you really were.” She sighed. “I wanted to keep you like that. I wanted you to grow up with us, safe and protected and loved. I wanted to give you the childhood that was stolen from you, so you’d know how it feels to be...”

“To be all those things,” Sandy finished in a whisper. “Loved and protected. Cared for, educated, looked after. _Wanted_. I...”

She stopped, shaking her head, swallowing; her eyes glimmered briefly, damp with tears, but this time they did not fall.

Tripitaka felt her breath hitch, pain kicking in her chest. “Monkey talked me out of it, if you can believe that.”

“I can believe it.” She came to a stop, pretending to study a speck of dirt on the blade of her scythe. “For all his flaws, Monkey is prudent: he knows that I’m our second most competent fighter. He’d miss me watching his back.”

“He’d miss _you_ ,” Tripitaka threw back, light but with absolute seriousness. “We all would.” She let that sit for a beat, then confessed, “He was right: it was a stupid idea. But still, even knowing that, there’s a part of me that wishes I could have.”

Even now, yes.

Even knowing, too, the chaos and harm that ill-thought-out wishes could wreak. Still, even now, a part of her wanted to go back to that grove and wish with every breath in her body that she — that _they_ , the three of them and their strange little family — could give that small, scared Sandy the childhood she deserved.

Sandy didn’t say anything; though Tripitaka knew better than to believe it was true, she wore the distant look of someone who wasn’t really listening. She trailed her finger along the curve of the blade, seemingly oblivious to its sharpness, then started walking again without warning. Faster now, Tripitaka was certain: she had to scramble to keep up.

They walked in silence for a short while, Sandy gazing around in her usual distracted manner at nothing in particular. Trying to put some distance between herself and the conversation, perhaps, or else steeling herself for its continuation. Either way, Tripitaka let the silence hang comfortably between them, not speaking, not pressing, not asking for more. Just walking beside her, quiet and present and awed by how much she’d missed such a simple, soundless thing.

Finally, unprompted, Sandy took a deep breath and said, “I don’t know that I understand my feelings any better now than I did before.”

It wasn’t exactly new information. But then, that was hardly new in itself; like so much of what Sandy said, the words came out toneless and discordant, an observation plucked out of the air and filtered through clear, clean water. Sandy was always the last to understand herself; her revelations were revelation to herself alone.

“Okay,” Tripitaka said, gently encouraging. “That’s okay.”

“Is it?” Not curious this time, but upset; her voice rose on the last word, thick with self-directed anger. “After everything I put you all through so that I might better understand them, is it really okay to come out of such an ordeal entirely unchanged?”

Tripitaka let that sit for a few paces, watching out of the corner of her eye as Sandy’s fingers clenched over the haft of her scythe, as her jaw clenched too, then struggled to loosen.

Finally, keeping her voice low, as she would if she were trying to coax a frightened kitten out of a tree, she said, “I don’t think you’re unchanged, Sandy, just because you didn’t achieve instant enlightenment about something very complicated.”

Sandy’s confusion-furrowed brow made it clear she saw no difference. “It was what I wished,” she pointed out. “To better understand myself, yes? To better express...”

 _For me,_ Tripitaka thought, bitterness and self-loathing rising up again in her chest. _Not for yourself, but because you thought it was what I wanted. Because you thought it would—_

“I think,” she said aloud, hastily shutting down the thought before it could devour her, “if there’s one thing we’ve learned from all this, it’s that our wishes aren’t always granted in the ways we might expect. Can you really say, truthfully, you don’t feel any different at all?”

“I...” A sigh, heavy but touched with something softer, something Tripitaka hadn’t heard from her before. “No.”

“I think you feel very different,” Tripitaka said, pressing the advantage carefully, cautiously. “I think you feel...”

“Yes.” The word was strangled, the one that followed more so: “ _Safe_.”

It resonated, as impactful now for the hundredth time as it was the first, even more meaningful from an older, quieter Sandy than it had been from her fragile, tear-streaked younger self. It mattered, it was important, and as she turned to look her full in the eye Tripitaka wondered if Sandy really understood just how much of a difference it made, that she could say it, that she could feel it, that she could—

That she could believe it was true.

That she could hold eye-contact, courageous and unflinching, and nod her agreement when Tripitaka whispered, “You are.”

It mattered. It mattered so much.

“Perhaps,” Sandy conceded, little more above a whisper herself, “I am a little changed after all.”

“Perhaps.” Tripitaka let her smile linger just until Sandy ducked her head again, then quietly, sadly sobered. “Listen: I know we don’t— _apparently_ we don’t do apologies any more...”

Sandy sighed. “I wish we did,” she said, a little conspiratorially. “I think they can do much good. But you know none of us can argue with Monkey once he’s decided on something.”

She chuckled, then, wan and a little watery but earnest enough that Tripitaka found the courage to press on.

“I won’t,” she said, only a fraction lighter than before. “I’ll spare you the embarrassment of seeing me grovel and beg for your forgiveness. But I swear to you, Sandy: I won’t ever, ever try to push you like that again. To process your feelings if you’re not ready to deal with them, to talk about them if you don’t want to. Any of it, all of it. I shouldn’t have done it in the first place. I shouldn’t have made you feel like wishing yourself better was the only way to...”

_To be good enough for me, for us, for the plant, for the quest, for—_

“That,” Sandy interrupted, cutting off her thoughts and her words before either could become too frenzied, “sounds awfully like an apology.”

Tripitaka allowed herself the luxury of a brief laugh.

“Maybe it is,” she admitted. “But I mean it. You _are_ safe, Sandy. Safe and home and loved and cared for. You’re all of those things, and so are your feelings. Even if you don’t understand them, even if you don’t want to talk about them, even if you can’t. It’s okay, all of it.”

Sandy ducked her head, damp-eyed and smiling shyly. “Even if I almost kill a life-saving magical plant?”

“Even then, you great bloody goofball.”

This not from Tripitaka, but from Pigsy.

He’d slowed to a more characteristic pace, dropping back to fall into step beside them. He was smiling too, not shy like Sandy, but with a touch of nervousness that made Tripitaka once again think of his younger self, self-conscious and so afraid of not being good enough.

Sandy flinched a little, her gaze drawn naturally to the plant in his hand. “Uh,” she managed, nervousness making her inarticulate. “I, uh... that is, I’m—”

“Yeah, yeah.” He made a show of rolling his eyes, but Tripitaka could tell the gesture was empty; he was trying a little too hard to be his usual careless self, but it was clear that he’d spent a great deal of time thinking about this before deigning to approach them. “Didn’t we cover the whole ‘no apologising’ thing already?”

“Yes.” Sandy flinched again, minutely this time. “But, um...”

“Good. So we don’t need to dwell on it.” His eyes grew darker, harder in a way that was rare to him. “You messed up and nearly killed the thing. I messed up and yelled at you about it. We all messed up, we’re all really stupid and really sorry. Blah, blah, blah. You know, it’s hard enough walking and talking at the same time; can’t we just skip the messy bits for a change?”

So saying, he shoved the plant at her chest, turning his face away as he did so, like he couldn’t bear to watch.

Sandy blinked at the little pot, looking somewhere between awestruck and sickened. “But I almost killed her.”

Pigsy, looking like he was already regretting every second of this decision, clearly needed no reminding of this fact; Tripitaka could tell it came very hard to him, to surrender his life once more into the hands of one who had been so unintentionally careless with it before. She wanted to touch his arm, squeeze his shoulder, to offer some kind of reassurance or at least to show him that she understood the cost of this concession, but instinct told her now was not the time to intrude.

“Yeah,” he said at last, sounding strained and unhappy. “Yeah, you almost did. But you didn’t. And it... I mean, Mycelia did give the blasted thing to you, didn’t she? Who’s to say I’m not messing with its purpose somehow by keeping it from you?”

Sandy made a horrible choking sound, like she was trying to laugh and whimper at the same time and failing spectacularly at both. “Do you really believe that?”

“Not for a bloody second.” The still-serious look on his face belied the lightness of his words as he gave the pot a pointed shake. “But the thing’s yours. Take it.”

“I don’t...” She stopped walking, stood paralysed, staring at the pot, at the leaves and the stems, the fresh, clean soil, at everything except his face. “Wouldn’t you feel uncomfortable, knowing she was in my hands again? I have, after all, proven myself untrustworthy.”

Pigsy opened his mouth, no doubt to agree, then wisely shut it again.

“Nah,” he said instead, a lie that was obvious even to Tripitaka; Sandy, who could scent deception like a shark scented blood, would most certainly have caught it. Still, Pigsy pressed on as if he stood any chance at all of convincing her it was the truth. “I mean, we’ve already covered the whole ‘what’s the worst that can happen’ thing, right? So, uh... what’s the worse-than-worst that can happen?”

“Many things,” Sandy said, still clearly on the verge of panic. “I could actually kill her this time. I could strip her of her healing properties somehow, I could stunt her growth, or else reverse it entirely like I did ours. I could...”

“You won’t,” he said, only fractionally more convincing than before. “I trust you.” Then, because it was clear she would never believe that: “And even if I didn’t, I definitely trust _her_.”

And he waved his free hand, rake and all, at—

“ _Tripitaka_.”

This from Sandy, breathed like the most precious of prayers.

Pigsy’s grin, entirely too casual for the moment, confirmed it.

“Right.” He winked gamely at Tripitaka, but knew better than to offer the same to Sandy. “She’s got both our backs, you know? Whatever bloody chaos you try and wreak on that thing, I trust her to...”

_To reverse it, to undo it, to keep you in check before you go that far, to take care of you and the stupid plant and all of us._

So many different kinds of trust, all spoken without a single word. Tripitaka wanted to protest, to argue, to insist that she was no more worthy than Sandy, that she was human and flawed and fallible and not good enough. She wanted to give voice to all those things, all the self-doubt and self-loathing she’d seen in their younger selves and felt reverberate again and again inside her own chest like a second heartbeat. She wanted to pour out every atom of her insecurity, her weakness, her helplessness...

But one look at Sandy’s face, and all those things disappeared.

She expected conflict, she expected shame and guilt and grief, expected the self-conscious self-hatred of one who had just been told they weren’t trustworthy enough on their own. Instead she was glowing, radiant and beatific, lit up for the first time in far too long with the warm, perfect light of hope and faith. She smiled, let out a shaky, hopeful breath, and accepted the plant.

“Yes,” she whispered, with aching reverence. “I trust her too.”

Tripitaka waited for her own self-doubt to surface again, her own guilt, her own shame, her own troubled feelings. She waited for the flush on her neck to burn hotter, the protests to surge up into her throat and her mouth, waited for the inevitable _‘you shouldn’t do that’_ or _‘please don’t’_ , for her voice, unbidden, to beg them to find someone more deserving to look at with such trust.

She waited for the little voice in her head, always there even now, reminding her of all her faults and failures, the too-many ways she had let them all down and surely would again, the too-many ways she was not good enough, not strong enough, not worthy enough—

But as she looked at them, the contrasting light-and-dark mirrors of their eyes reflecting absolute, unshakeable faith, she felt seen and known and loved, faults and failures and all.

And for the first time since she claimed the name Tripitaka, she found that little voice of doubt was wholly and completely silent.

*

She thought — naively, foolishly, optimistically — that would be the last anyone had to say about the whole affair.

Alas, Kaedo had other ideas.

He sauntered up to her a short while later, after the others had dispersed. Sandy, making clear her need to be alone for a while with her plant and her thoughts, had fallen back to once more bring up the rear, and Pigsy, being naturally restless in the wake of a moment of surrender, had shuffled off to catch up with Monkey and cleanse his palate with some verbal sparring. 

Tripitaka, on her own, had just taken the first idealistic steps to relaxing and taking in the scenery, prematurely imagining that she might actually be left in peace and quiet for more than five seconds.

No such luck.

Insufferable even to the very end, Kaedo slipped effortlessly into step beside her and said, with unapologetic cheeriness, “So they’re all officially idiots, then?”

Tripitaka rolled her eyes, but made no effort to change her pace or shoo him away. “Because they trust me?”

“Among many, _many_ other reasons.” His tone was sober enough, but there was a twinkle in his eye and a gleam to his grin that gave away his true playfulness. “Seriously. Do you think they’d all be so quick to sing your praises and throw their lives into your hands if they knew how many breakdowns you had when they were stuck as kids?”

“Unfortunately,” Tripitaka said with a sigh, “I think they would.”

“Probably.” He made a disgruntled face, but the playful gleam didn’t dissipate. “So. Definitely idiots, then?”

“Definitely idiots, yeah.”

Tripitaka sighed again, this time more heavily. She didn’t want to talk about this, didn’t want to risk inviting back the discomfort and self-doubt, the little voice she’d only just begun to banish.

Fortunately, before she had the chance to start backsliding too far into her thoughts, Kaedo laughed, whacked her on the back, and cheerfully added, “Well, then, I guess that makes four of us.”

Tripitaka quirked a brow. “Four what?”

“Four idiots.” Another pointed whack, this one sending her into a fit of coughing. Even after the company of three gods, the boy was surprisingly strong. “Four great stupid idiots who are just idealistic enough to trust you with our lives and follow you to the ends of the world.” He flashed another cheeky grin, dazzling and entirely too charming for its own good, and added with a flourish, “Go figure, huh?”

It took a long, long moment for Tripitaka to piece together what he was saying, to reconcile his words with her thoughts, what he was actually saying with what she had expected him to.

“I’m sorry, what?” she managed at last, still unable to make it make any sense. “All you’ve done since this whole thing began is insult me and criticise every decision I’ve tried to make. Since _before_ this whole thing began, actually. I mean, you practically introduced yourself with ‘hi, I may be half your age, but I’m going to show you all the things you’ve done wrong in your whole entire life’.”

“That’s a bit dramatic,” Kaedo muttered. Then, rather reluctantly, “But not totally wrong, I guess. Although, in my defence, you ar— you _were_ kind of a mess. And I wasn’t wrong.”

“So what happened?” Tripitaka demanded, refusing to rise to that particular bait. “Fair to say, I’ve not lived up to any of your expectations, yes? So why the change of heart?”

Kaedo considered this for a long moment. Really seemed to consider it, even, growing thoughtful and sombre in a way that was uncharacteristic of him. Perhaps he didn’t really know the answer himself; perhaps he simply understood that this was genuinely important to her, that in spite of his smug self-righteousness and all his insufferable ‘I told you so’, she really did value his opinions.

She’d never admit it, of course. But then, she suspected he’d never admit, either, that he cared about hers too.

Finally, in a low tone that spoke of deep contemplation, he confessed, “Dunno.”

Tripitaka didn’t believe that for a single second. “You?” she pressed, with only surface-level playfulness. “Admitting that you don’t know something? That can’t possibly be right.”

He chuckled, but sobered swiftly, shaking his head and pressing on as if he hadn’t heard her at all, voice heavy and low, like he was sounding out his thoughts as they came to him.

“Watching you with them, maybe?” he mused. “Or watching them with you. The way they listen to you even when you’re talking rubbish. The way you get through to their big stupid heads without even trying. They could crush you with a finger, any one of them, but instead they’d follow you anywhere, do anything you say, no matter how stupid or dangerous. And the way they look at you, it’s like...”

He stopped, shaking his head. For a moment, he seemed almost overwhelmed; watching him through mist-filmed eyes, Tripitaka felt rather the same way too.

“It means something,” she agreed quietly. “I don’t really understand it either. Like Sandy and her feelings, I guess. But I’m trying to. And trying to be worthy.”

“So noble, huh? The great prophesised Tripitaka.” His snicker was suspiciously shaky, though, and it lacked his trademark mockery. “But yeah. I guess maybe it does mean something.” He took a deep breath, swiped moodily at his face, then shrugged and said, “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just getting sentimental in my old age.”

This from the only one of them still on the wrong side of puberty. Tripitaka had no choice; she had to laugh.

“I think we’ve had enough age-related insights for one day,” she said, nudging him in the ribs. “Don’t you?”

“Right, right, sure.” He laughed too, stronger this time, then grew thoughtful again. “I mean it, though. Like, seriously for once: you get inside people’s heads. And other places too, probably. Their hearts, their souls, everywhere. Make people believe in you, despite all the odds. Even when they don’t believe in themselves, even when they don’t believe in anything at all. Still, somehow, you get them... get _us_ to believe in you.” His smile, though still a little sharp at the edges, was much too soft for the way he winked, youthful and mischievous. “I guess I just figured... maybe that’s something worth sticking around for.”

High praise indeed, Tripitaka thought, if typically self-righteous.

She looked around herself, taking in her surroundings and her companions. Monkey and Pigsy leading the way, bickering and arguing and generally giving each other a hard time; watching them, Tripitaka thought fondly of their younger selves: of a shy and self-conscious Pigsy, a boy who would have given anything to avoid conflict of any kind, and of a a proud, arrogant Monkey, not so very different from the all-powerful ‘great sage’ he would one day grow up into. She thought of them both, Pigsy staring at his boots, Monkey staring at him, smug and flexing and full of pride as he looked him up and down, offering to make him a better warrior, a better soldier, a better god.

He had, Tripitaka thought. And Pigsy had made him better in turn, bringing Monkey’s ego back down to earth in the moments it grew too big. They were good for each other, and they were bad for each other, and perhaps that was exactly what they needed to be: a little of both depending on the moment, back-to-back when fighting demons and toe-to-toe when fighting each other.

She looked behind her too, to a Sandy who was both the same and completely changed. Quiet and withdrawn, so much the lonely, damaged god she knew that Tripitaka’s heart ached for all the years she’d lost, and yet different as well: the plant in her hand was healthy now, revitalised and reborn twice over, and the salt that had once tainted its soil painted its tracks now across her face instead. Silent tears, yes, but tears just the same, glimmering and glittering and _real_ , heartbreaking and tragic but so, so beautiful.

A step towards growth, Tripitaka thought, as delicate as the plant and just as much in need of tending.

And she would. As much as she was allowed, as much as Sandy could take, she would tend it and her.

And all of them.

Monkey and all his hidden vulnerabilities, the need to belong and the fear of betrayal shrouded beneath centuries of pride and arrogance. Pigsy, and the parts of himself that still wondered if he was worthy, buried so deep under all those layers of decadence and luxury that he’d probably convinced even himself he’d cast them all off.

And Kaedo...

A boy, still only a boy, where the others had grown and lived and changed. A boy still, for all his smugness and all his attitude and all his surety that he was right. A boy, still only a boy, and whether he liked it or not she would tend him as well.

She smiled, met his gleaming, mischief-dark eyes, and said, “Welcome to the family.”

***


End file.
